Chandler and a Death Foretold
by Blue-Inked Frost
Summary: Heather McNamara gets possessed by ghosts in the cafeteria. Heather Duke reads tarot cards. Heather Chandler knows they're both faking it, until she gets a prophecy about her own death. To avoid her own murder at her best friend's hands, Chandler recruits a co-conspirator - the new kid in town, Jason Dean. Chandler/J.D., Veronica/Duke.
1. Monday

Heather Chandler knew she was going to die.

She took credit for leading Westerburg High through its supernatural phase, even if she wasn't personally conducting seances or shuffling tarot cards. She designed push poll questions along the lines of, 'You die and come back as a ghost, then you discover a massive fortune in buried treasure. Then you find out that the apocalypse is coming in three days. What do you do with the money?'

Heather McNamara claimed to see ghosts and apport objects with her hands and legs tied to tables. Heather Duke carried out tarot readings in an acid-green lame (it was both lamé and lame, how convenient was that?) cloak she'd bought at some filthy little thrift store. Veronica played the role of the sceptic, so those who didn't believe also had someone to follow. Veronica was always bright, perhaps a little too bright for her own good. Heather Chandler liked her, even as she knew she had to regularly freeze incipient signs of rebellion in the bud. Veronica needed to know her place.

It was another tedious lunch hour in the caf. Veronica left early to the library over a dumb French assignment. The lunch poll was over and Heather McNamara and Heather Duke were setting up their acts. Heather Chandler closed her eyes for a moment, like a lizard sunning herself in the warm glare of popularity. Some nerd turned off the lights, leaving only the seven black wax candles glimmering around Heather Duke, glinting on the painted cards she constantly shuffled from hand to hand.

Heather McNamara did her usual sighs and moans, while tied to the lunch table with Ram's shoelaces. She told Country Club Courtney that her dead darling pooch - a horrible fat terrier that always nipped at visitors' heels, and died of a well deserved heart attack - was happy in the afterlife and wished her well. Some clouds of glowing ectoplasm drifted effectively along the table. Heather Chandler had happened to see fake hands, muslin sheets, luminous paint, and string in Heather McNamara's locker at different times, and so took no alarm. Heather channelled some poor Nigerian chieftain with a ridiculous mangled name and encouraged Peter to send charity donations to turkey farms so Africans could have a good Thanksgiving.

The lights came back on. People started to dribble out. Heather Chandler gave a smile here, a frown there, a subtle needle and push over there. You had to give the little people at least some access if you expected to rule; be surprisingly gracious where they didn't expect it, and give sudden sharp orders to those who were a little too pleased with themselves.

The Heathers were practically the only people left in the caf when Heather McNamara turned to Heather Chandler, looking pop-eyed as if she were still channelling some ghost.

"You will die this Saturday," Heather said. Her voice sounded low and raspy, like she was speaking through a mouthful of pins. "I see a dark man coming from far away. I see your best friend. Not Heather or Heather. Blue and black are the colors of your death. She and the dark man will kill you together, and everyone will rejoice at your funeral."

"The hell?" Heather Chandler said. It was a weak and lame line, not worthy of her. But Heather McNamara was already halfway across the room, on her way to gym class. "Heather, did you hear what Heather said?"

"Sorry, Heather." Heather Duke sounded confused. "I didn't hear anything ... ?"

"Bag it, Heather." Heather Chandler grabbed one of the tarot cards and flipped it over. She saw a skeleton in a black robe. "Fuck." No way, no day; this was some stupid prank by Heather and Heather. She grabbed a second card. It was also a skeleton in a black robe. "Tell Heather this is very hilarious, Heather. I thought you and Veronica were best bulimia buddies, she's the only one willing to shove her fingers down your throat, it's funny you would say this retarded crap about her. I don't believe a word of your shit."

"I don't get it, Heather," Heather Duke said in her usual beaten-puppy whisper. She was such a pathetic pillowcase it was almost no fun to put her down any more. Her hands stumbled over her cards and they fell down to the table in a tangled mess. Heather Chandler snatched a third card to turn over.

Also a matching skeleton in a black robe. Heather Chandler laid it out with the others she'd drawn.

Heather Duke's chair scraped backwards. The squeak was sudden and the shocked expression on her face looked almost genuine, baby-pink lips open and cow-like eyes wide. "Heather, I only have one Death in the pack. Where did those come from?"

Heather Chandler drew again. And again. She didn't get anything else but Death. Heather Duke snatched the cards back from her and paged through them frantically. As Heather looked over Duke's shoulder, she saw empresses and priestesses and lovers and knights, most of them cards she'd want to draw. Hell, she'd even take the gap-mouthed Fool above her pick. But she plucked again, and somehow the card in her hand was always Death.

"I told you my powers were real, unlike Heather's," Heather Duke said, growing the tiniest bit of a smirk on her face, and took her cards out with her to head to class.

For once, Heather Chandler let her go without a word. She sat in the caf and skipped class for the rest of the afternoon, thinking about how Veronica would murder her on Saturday.


	2. Thursday

Heather Chandler still hadn't decided what she was going to do, other than 'avoid Veronica at all costs on Saturday'. Maybe she'd disinvite Veronica to the Remington party tomorrow. If she was going to do that, she'd do it at the last possible moment, for maximum humiliation. Should she take Heather or Heather instead? Heather was hung up over Ram and wasn't interested in the Remington guys, but Heather was a pathetic flat-chested prudish pillowcase who'd seemed way too amused about Heather's impending death.

So Heather sat in front of her dresser for now and tested out a new eyeshadow. It was okay with her red cashmere sweater, but she didn't need her sweater in spring. It was better with the watermelon pink lipgloss than the cinnamon spice lipgloss. She should have gone out to get drunk at the nearest kegger, party while she was still alive. Hell, she didn't really believe Heather and Heather's crap, or did she?

She fluently cursed at the knock at the door that broke her concentration. Her father looked in and waited for her to finish.

"Hey, princess," he said. "My property developer's here. Going to blow up the old hotel for me. He's got a kid your age, starting school tomorrow. You want to join me in the meet and greet?"

"It depends. How much of a bribe are we talking if the kid's a loser?" Heather said.

"Fifty."

"Paid in advance only."

"A deal's a deal." Heather's father obligingly slid her a bill. He'd let it wrinkle in his wallet, which she never approved of, but she'd let it grudgingly go this time.

The property developer was some travel-stained old guy in an unfashionable tracksuit, and his kid was a column of black in the corner. That was a stupid description. Black was just all Heather saw, for that first moment. He wore a grotty old black trenchcoat and had very dark hair, that was all, above pale and slightly freckled skin. Heather Chandler would file him straight into the ugly loser bin without a second thought.

But a chill ran up her spine.

 _Oh. A dark man. Admittedly he's more short, dark, and greasy, as against tall, dark, and handsome._

She strutted over to him while their parents were locked in conversation. He was reaching for one of the ornamental books, which was dumb. Any idiot could see the spines were arranged by colour and they were for aesthetics, not actual reading, especially by disgusting greasebags like this guy.

"Don't touch," Heather snapped. "First question. Where did you move from?"

The kid's lip curled, as if he'd dared to judge Heather too and didn't particularly like her. "Most recently? Half Moon Bay."

 _In California. Technically, far away_ , Heather thought.

"Second question. You ever read books outside school hours?"

"No, I'm functionally illiterate."

 _Sarcastic answer. Yeah, he's Veronica's type_ , Heather thought. Heather McNamara's type was jocks who'd taken far too many footballs to the head; Heather Duke's type was a battered copy of Moby-Dick that she probably rubbed herself off with in bed; and Veronica's type was dark, sarcastic, and preferably into weird obscure shit that nobody else was into. Like that eighth-grade dweeb into mythology. If Veronica had kept him, she'd never have been allowed into the Heathers.

Heather Chandler's type was hot, rich college men who got her into the best parties, because unlike her other friends, she had common sense.

"Shut up and follow me," Heather said. Her heels clacked on the lino and it took a minute to realise he wasn't obeying her. She glared back at him. "I know where my dad's liquor stash is and you don't," she hissed.

"Absinthe a la Baudelaire," he suggested.

"Straight bourbon and you'll like it," Heather said. She could drink anyone she knew under the table, even Kurt and Ram. Ten to one this guy was a total lightweight who'd never actually sampled anything more serious than shaken lemonade.

"Listen," Heather said, sitting sideways on her father's red plush chair in the study, drink in hand. "My parents and I have a very well-defined relationship. If I scream loud enough, they give me anything I want."

"How lucky for you." The kid - apparently called J.D., no first name or last for that matter - handled his glass well enough so far, staring moodily into his remaining quarter-measure as if he didn't care enough to even look up at Heather.

"So you'll do exactly as I say, or my father will terminate your father's employment."

That got his attention. J.D. looked sharply upward at her. Some indiscernible expression flashed across his green eyes, which Heather didn't like: most people were extremely discernible to her. She always saw their little secrets and how best to prick them into spilling yet more secrets in anger. "You've made several unfounded assumptions about my relationship with my dad and my relationship with my dad's business. As it happens, I'm not inclined to help you out of charity," he said.

"My best friend is going to murder me," Heather said, at exactly the moment J.D. swallowed another gulp of bourbon.

She was satisfied to see him choke and cough for almost ten seconds straight.

"Must be your pleasant personality," J.D. said eventually.

"You stick to her. Her name's Veronica Sawyer. I'll make her wear her black and blue jacket tomorrow. It's very, all over patches, no one else has anything like it. Flirt with her or whatever. Then, on Saturday, kill me. Only, obviously, I'll fake my death. I want to see how my best friend responds," Heather said.

 _Everyone will rejoice at your funeral_ , Heather McNamara said in her stupid fake ghost possession. Heather Chandler didn't think that was true. She and Veronica had their slight disagreements, but they were friends; Veronica was sharp enough to actually appreciate some of Heather's best schemes. Heather Chandler and Heather McNamara had been best friends since elementary school, enduring the horrors of braces together and making sure everyone forgot that little fact about them. Heather Duke had needed a few years of convincing to stop following Martha Dumptruck around like a lost kitten and finally join the Heathers, but she was one of them now.

If Heather faked her death at Veronica's hand and got to see how Veronica and her other friends acted afterward, then she'd _know_.

She'd be willing to trade a lot just to know.

"Are you thinking knife, gun, noose, drowning, drinking liquid gold, burned alive, shoved in the oven of your gingerbread house?" J.D. asked. "Could get messy."

"Looks like I have to think of everything myself," Heather said sweetly. She hadn't missed that unsubtle insult he'd slipped in there. "Poison. Look for some bottle with a skull and bones on it somewhere in the cupboards. I'll fake drink ... _et voilà_."

"What do I get out of this?" J.D. said.

"You get to see how the story ends," Heather said. "Aren't you _curious_?"

J.D. shrugged as indifferently as he could, but he was in. Heather smiled in victory. She'd baited another fish to her hook.

Heather Chandler, queen of the school. Let them all mourn bitterly when she died. Veronica could do her worst.


	3. After the Funeral

_Who killed Cock Robin?  
_ _I, said the Sparrow,  
_ _with my bow and arrow,  
_ _I killed Cock Robin._

—

Why the fuck was she trapped in a coffin?

She was pretty sure it was a coffin. It was dark, so Heather couldn't exactly tell where she was, but it was a small wood box with very little space inside it, and something in her just knew she was trapped underground. Maybe miles underground. Or six feet under, at least.

She didn't mean it to go this far. How the fuck had it gone this far? Did Veronica and J.D. do this to her as a joke, a joke that might as well be a real death?

She'd faked drinking Veronica's poison. She wanted to fake her death. Then things went black. Try as she might, she couldn't remember anything after that, except waking up here.

Fuck, how much air was there in here? She slowed her breathing down. She'd not die here. Heather Chandler would scratch and claw and kick her way to the surface, demand answers, demand everything those fuckers had to offer and then some.

Heather's nails broke. She kept scratching. She never fucking gave up. No surrender, you shit-faced maggots, you pathetic pieces of piss who can't find a boot to trickle down. I'm getting out of here.

Then she heard clinking noises above her. She could have started to cry. Instead she put her palms on her cheeks and felt foundation and blusher on there. Way too much, the stuff totally caked on her, nothing she'd have worn while alive. Anyway, she wouldn't smudge it. She'd scream and whoever was here would unbury her the fuck already. She let her lungs go.

And heard, muffled through earth and wood, "Shut the fuck up, I'm almost finished."

The shovel finally broke through Heather's timber. She sat up, breathed air, and looked up at the stars. Nightfall. J.D. was the only person besides her in the graveyard. "Way to keep me waiting, dickhead," Heather snapped. Dirt cascaded all over the pink dress she was wearing. It had been a bridesmaid's dress for her cousin's wedding. She'd never forgive Grandma Chandler for insisting she wear it, and she'd especially never forgive her family for burying her in it.

"Oh, good, you're moving around and complaining. And here I was getting worried they'd charge me for necrophilia," J.D. said.

Heather extended her middle finger. It felt good. "Fuck you too. You took your fucking time."

"It's funny how you freak out and make bad decisions when you start thinking, oh, oops, turns out crazy girl wanted to frame her best enemy for her actual death - and incidentally yours truly," J.D. snapped. "Did you miss the part where you took a swan-dive through a glass coffee table?"

Heather touched her arms. They were caked with makeup as well. She couldn't see any huge scars or blood there, at least not in the faint moonlight. Maybe the mortician did a good job. "I think I missed all of it. What day is it?"

He told her.

"Fuck. I missed my own funeral," Heather said. "What was the turnout?"

J.D. didn't even answer her, just pointed to a messy tarp he must've brought to the graveyard. "I brought a spare shovel, just in case. Time for you to help with the coverup."

Heather sat on a smooth gravestone, arranging her pretty dress around her. "No, this is your mess. You're re-digging that grave for me. After all, I'm dead. Can't arrest a dead girl for vandalism." She tucked her fists inside the folds of her skirt, hiding her broken nails, smiling in spite of the pain.

J.D. graciously gave her the finger, but he didn't have a choice and started shovelling the earth back where it belonged. "You're lucky they didn't cut you open," he said. "Or have you got a nice hollowed-out Y-scar under there? Feel free _not_ to show me. And we're going to test whether you can still go out in sunlight. Have you grown any fangs lately? Hair in unexpected places?" he said.

Heather shrugged. She didn't think she was Dracula or the Wolf Man or whatever. Her broken nails were the biggest weirdness she could actually feel, and she sure as hell wasn't going to look under her dress in front of short, dark and greasy here, not that she'd find anything wrong if she did. She was hungry and thirsty, but paté and something alcoholic - a good strong cherry-flavored cocktail, for instance - struck her as a lot less gross than drinking blood. Like she was some loser gothic stoner in the school parking lot. Eww. It occurred to Heather that the sooner J.D. finished re-burying her coffin, the sooner he could take her somewhere that involved a roof and traces of civilization, so she decided not to interrupt him.

Her parents had chosen a marble angel statue with a heaven-tilted smirk that said 'I'm extremely constipated and if you can't direct me to the nearest bathroom I'll slit your throat', a beloved daughter inscription, and the quote _The price of a virtuous woman is far above rubies - Proverbs 31:10_. Screw them. Heather considered commenting on the shoddy job J.D. had done of filling in the dirt and grass above her grave, but maybe it would rain and hide his half-assed mess. It would just have to do.

"I'm staying at your place, for the time being," she informed him. "In fact, my dad owns it, so it's really more my place, isn't it? It's a dump, but I guess it'll do for now."

J.D. muttered something uncomplimentary that she chose not to hear. Heather followed him to a motorbike and sat behind him. The air chilled her.

"Give me your coat," Heather said. "It'll look weird. A dead girl in a light dress on the back of a bike." She got a mental image like the copy of some stupid overheated Mills and Boon like the maid liked to read, a woman with long blonde hair and a huge pale skirt flowing out behind her, accidentally on purpose showing most of her bosom while she rode a black horse through a heavy wind. "I don't want people to see me, not now, anyway."

He scowled, but saw her point. Heather wouldn't have voluntarily gone within ten feet of that coat under normal circumstances. It stank of J.D.'s recent manual labor and it hadn't been particularly clean before that. But she tucked her hair under the collar and felt a little warmer. The bike hummed below her as they rode through Sherwood's streets at an ungodly hour, almost alone in the waking world.

Heather Chandler had defied prophecy and lived through her own death. An image of swords and a blonde woman facing down the darkness came to her mind - just a stupid cartoon that Heather Duke had cared about and she hadn't. No living man could defeat the evil guy, but the blonde woman let down her hair and proclaimed that she was no man. Prophecy destroyed, defeated, done. Stick a fork in it and call it Joan of Arc, because that thing was beyond barbecued. Heather grinned triumphantly at the dark streets. Suck it up, Veronica.

Heather stalked indoors in the rented house and flung off the coat on the floor. She left trails of gravedirt behind her, not bothering to wipe her feet on the mat. She scowled at her windblown hair as she looked at herself in the hall mirror. Her parents should have known better and buried her with it tied up, preferably with one of her good scrunchies. The house sounded pretty empty; it seemed J.D.'s father wasn't home.

"Thing is, I did it," J.D. admitted. "Veronica picked up the wrong cup. It was an accident. You should tell her the truth."

He was defending Veronica. How interesting. "You're one of many as far as Veronica's concerned, so don't flatter yourself." Heather stalked into what she guessed would be the kitchen. "She has a type. I think it's a stupid type, but most of my friends couldn't tell a hawk from a handjob if their lives depended on it. Most people at Westerburg are stupid. Hell, I guess most of the world is." She despised herself for turning on the philosophical ramblings. "You flirted with her like I told you to. You ... " Heather prided herself on reading people. "Great. You fucked. Your idea? No, I see it was her idea. You're welcome."

Fuck, she'd really done it this time, hadn't she? Heather had walked herself into some stupid romantic comedy, playing the wingman who arranged for the guy to tell the lies that got him the girl but would lose her again in a hot second after Heather spoke up. J.D. looked annoyingly smirky, far too much like Heather's boyfriend David after she gave into him. Heather threw open the fridge, relieved to find some white wine of middling quality in there, and might have thrown the bottle at J.D.'s head if she wasn't so thirsty.

"Fetch me something to eat," she said. The wine hit the spot, but it made her realize she was hungry as hell. "I don't cook, so don't ask."

"Veronica didn't want to choke you on drain cleaner, but she wanted you out of her life and puking your guts out," J.D. said. He set cast-iron pans rattling as he moved around. "Who'd blame her? I saw what you and your lovely friends did to that girl in the caf."

Heather thought back, to before she'd been buried. She had played the note trick on Betty Finn over lunch; Westerburg's chief dweebette was such a great target she'd say sorry for making you do it. "Sure, I gave Betty Finn shower-nozzle masturbation material for weeks," Heather said. "I did it for Veronica. She used to have a sense of humor, I thought she'd find it funny."

"You need a new sense of humor." Something splattered up from a pan with a great deal of oil. "Banana skins, whoopee cushions, pie in the face. Preferably yours."

"I don't eat pie."

"Then try some fettucine. Made it with extra garlic, just for you." J.D. flung a plate in front of her.

It was pretty gross. Pasta, packet tomatoes, fragments of once-green-now-black stuff, all slathered in what looked like melted Velveeta. And a heavy garlic stench.

"I don't eat pasta either. Goes straight to the hips," Heather said. J.D. looked at her as if he seriously wondered whether she were some horror movie thing. Which Heather would have instantly dismissed as stupid, if not for the way she'd died on Saturday and was dug up on Tuesday.

But he didn't bother accusing her again. "Congratulations. You've picked the microwaved cabbage option on our menu tonight. Can I trust you to operate a microwave? Read the manual first, it's somewhere under the dead cockroaches on top of the fridge," J.D. said. He combined the contents of Heather's plate with his own and set to it. "Don't touch the protein shakes if you get the urge; they're not mine."

As _if_. With a poor grace, Heather threw the bowl of green stuff in the microwave. If only she wasn't half starved. She ate it and tried not to think about what she was eating.

"I'll give you a shopping list," Heather said. "Hair dye, for one thing. Then I might be able to walk around despite being dead." Although walking around would be no fun if she couldn't go shopping. They should have buried her with her credit cards, like ancient Egyptian mummies got to have all their treasure and a few sacrificed servants following them to the afterlife. She'd probably be able to convince J.D. to rob her house if she promised him a share of the profits, but they could speak of that later.

"On to more important things," Heather said. "What did they say at my funeral? How much do they all miss me?"

—

Heather Duke sat across from Veronica in the library. She wore a tasteful British-schoolgirl white shirt and a gleeful smirk, and had a half-eaten Kit Kat next to her book.

"Are you happy she's dead, Veronica?" she said. "Me too."


	4. In the Cards

_Who saw Cock Robin die?  
_ _I, said the Fly,  
_ _with my little eye,  
_ _I saw him die._

—

Heather Duke leaned forward, excitement in her eyes. "What were you doing on Saturday morning, Veronica?"

"J.D.," Veronica said. She hoped she'd kept her face still. She knew very well how to fluster Duke, which was easy, and she got a disgusted grimace back, right on cue.

Duke picked up her pack of tarot cards, like they were a safety blanket for her. She shuffled them neatly.

"On Monday, Heather let you off early to do some pathetic French assignment," Duke recounted. "Then Heather did her usual ghost-possession mumbo-jumbo. She's such a fake. But, at the end of it, she said something to Heather. Something about death and something about _you_. I didn't hear it. Nobody else heard it. Heather still says she doesn't remember what she said. And then I predicted Heather was going to die."

Duke spun off her Death card from the top of the pack, on purpose. "The cards don't lie, Veronica. My powers are real." She said it as if she had doubted it herself, not that she'd admit it.

"I've seen the luminous paint in Heather's locker," Veronica said frostily. "I read your book of card tricks. You tell people vague bullshit until you hit on something that's significant to them, congratulations. This whole supernatural trend is a fun silly game, but I think it's time we tried something new."

"Was the Remington party not as fun as you expected it to be?" Duke said. "Did you have to lock yourself in an upstairs bathroom with a copy of Vanity Fair - novel, not magazine - to get away from boozy frat boys? Did you fight? Did you say something so earth-shatteringly bitchy that you made Heather off herself by the power of suggestion?"

Veronica glared at her, unable to speak for a moment. Duke was guessing wildly. She hoped like hell she wouldn't come anything close to the truth, the truth that she picked up the wrong mug and murdered Heather Chandler.

"Let me do another reading. For free, just for you," Duke said. She shuffled the cards then held them out with her eyes closed. "Pick three. Don't want to do it? I'll do it." Her acid-green fingernails flipped over a row of cards, left to right. She opened her eyes. "The Hanged Man is your past. A murderer receives their appropriate punishment. Isn't that interesting. The Hermit Over The Sea is your present. A quest for a strange being that no one has laid eyes upon. And the Red Queen is coming in your future. The Queen of Blood, the power of steel and swords and conquest. There will be a new Queen in Westerburg before this ends." Duke raised her head and flashed Veronica a look of challenge. "If you don't want me to spread uncomfortable rumors about you, I suggest you help me, Veronica. Or at least, don't get in my way."

Heather reshuffled the cards for herself, and drew a new one. "The Rising Star," she said. "That's one for me. Are you leaving, Veronica? Have fun."

Veronica walked past lockers festooned with wet red paint, half angry and half afraid. There was no reason for her to be afraid; Duke was faking and had no proof, only making things up. Technically, Veronica did not kill Heather Chandler. Accidents happen. Some accidents are lethal accidents. Veronica glared at the graffiti, which was still melodramatically dripping like it was sending an open invite to anyone to compare it to fresh blood. Well, Veronica wasn't one to give in to such invitations. The fresher the graffiti, the better for the janitor to clean it up quickly.

 _REMEMBER MARTHA DUNNSTOCK?_ someone had written, and followed it up with _HEATHER WAS ONLY THE SECOND._

There was only one other person in the locker rooms at the moment, ahead and almost disappearing through the next door. Veronica rushed to catch up to Heather McNamara. Heather hummed a tune under her breath, not a pop song but an old melody. The words came unbidden to Veronica's mind: _Who killed Cock Robin? I, said the Sparrow ..._ A half-full tin of red paint with the brush still in it hung from Heather's right hand. Looked like Heather had expanded her repertoire from the luminous variety. "Don't they kick you off the cheerleading team for vandalism, Heather?" she said. "Better clean that spot of red off your nose. It looks like it's catching."

"Oh, shit, have I got a pimple?" Heather reached for her compact. "Thanks, Veronica. You're a true friend."

"And what about Martha anyway?" Veronica said.

Heather McNamara stared at the graffiti as if she were seeing it for the first time, and acted as if it took her a long while to puzzle out what it said. "Maybe it's because Heather killed Martha," she said.


	5. Death and the Maiden

_Who caught Cock Robin's blood?  
_ _I, said the Fish,  
_ _with my little dish,  
_ _I caught his blood._

—

Martha Dunnstock was the first Westerburg suicide. She killed herself in freshman year, walked into traffic and was hit dead-on by a semitrailer. Before Martha's death, Heather Chandler said and did some cruel things and recruited Martha's only friend to join the Heathers.

Heather wasn't thinking about the past, squeezing out the bottle in front of a fog-tinted mirror. The hair dye was 8SC, Medium Copper Blonde, not the one she'd asked for, 6.5R Light Radiant Auburn. That asshole probably got it wrong on purpose. Fuck him. Heather wrapped up her hair and stepped out of the shower. She expected to have the place to herself for a few more hours. She rolled up her dress and walked out in a towel. She might as well see what she could dig up here.

She struck paydirt and found a pair of women's jeans and a light brown shirt at the bottom of one of the suitcases. Remnants of some ex-girlfriend? Ha, as if anyone but Veronica would give the likes of him the time of day. Or did J.D. murder some other woman on the road and bury her in a barrel and keep the clothes for a trophy? It seemed oddly plausible. But mom or older sister was more likely - and these were old and unfashionable enough for mom to be the best bet. An interim solution to avoid walking around in a ridiculous pink dress.

She opened a window and stuck her arm out into the daylight. Stupid to even test such a thing; she was fine. She gave a stray thought to it: if she were a creature of the night equipped with heavy-duty fangs, whose throats would she rip out first? Life's full of tough choices. Veronica on the top of the list for betraying her; Country Club Courtney and boring Peter Dawson and J.D. on general principles; David Harper because he was Heather's boyfriend after all, and should damn well follow her into undeath if he knew what was good for him.

Just a fantasy.

She looked down from the attic window and saw J.D. peel himself out of a pickup truck, alone. Heather went to meet him.

She stabbed an emotion out of him the moment he saw her, waiting for him under the hall light. She felt a grim vicious triumph at her success.

"Take those clothes off," J.D. growled at her.

There were two main directions Heather could take that one; emotional-devastation and all-men-are-perverts. She went with the first option.

"So these were your mommy's?" she said. "Did she leave you all alone? Must have been your pleasant personality."

"No points for reusing the joke," J.D. managed to snarl. He pulled a giant red garbage bag in behind him. "Not funny at all."

Heather loved weaknesses, when they belonged to other people. "Or is mommy dead? Don't tell me, you kept some clothes in the back of a suitcase for the smell. How very Norman Bates of you."

Of course Heather knew all about dead moms. In her case, it was childbirth complications, like some Disney-film mom conveniently got out of the way for the plot, and she'd called her dad's wife 'Mom' since she could remember. There had once been photos of Heather as a two-year-old flowergirl in her father's second wedding that depicted her lifting her yellow dress to show off her frilly panties, but she'd made damn sure to hunt those down and destroy them long ago. Heather's mom was a good mom, if your definition of that was 'bought her daughter anything she asked for and pretty much did as she was told'.

"You'll never guess what I found in front of the thrift shop," J.D. said "A huge pile of trash, thrown out like it didn't matter at all."

Heather dived toward the garbage bag. She recognized too many things in there. Some fucking retard had let her face powder break in the bag, spilling over her favorite red dress and least-favorite leggings. All clumped together, like it meant nothing, Westwood and Levis and L'Oreal makeup tumbling over each other. She ordered it dragged up to the attic anyway and yelled at J.D. to keep the hell away while she changed.

She came back in her own jeans and a good jacket, acting like nothing had happened.

"Did they miss you?" J.D. said, halfway through a cigarette. "Sure, that's why your parents junked your stuff. Do-They-Have-Thanksgiving-In-Africa Heather is beyond devastated - she thinks it's just awful they only got a day off and not a week off for your funeral. The Courtney creature's simpering like a cat that got the cream. Betty Finn's all broken up. Veronica wanted to see you puke your guts out. Your boyfriend David was so devastated he asked Moby-Dick Heather for a hot date at the funeral. Now she really respects your memory - she's sold her story to a dozen TV networks already. Have fun." He smirked, threw the remote at her head, and walked off. How kind of him.

TV shows all about Heather Chandler. Now that sounded like quality entertainment. Heather smiled at the thought. They all mourned for her tragic death, and she'd be even more popular when she miraculously came back. She sat down to watch.

Heather Duke was on practically every channel, including one in Spanish. What a geek; Heather hadn't realized she was actually fluent in the stuff.

And Duke looked _happy_. Smiling and comfortable to be on camera. Wearing a red skirt, even though Heather Chandler always wore red. If she'd told Duke once, she'd told her a thousand times, red was not her color because it clashed with her hair. Too bad no one else had noticed. None of those reporters had told Duke she looked ugly and needed to lose about ten pounds of puppy fat. None of those reporters told Duke to shut up.

" _We were best friends who always wore each other's clothes because we were the same size, so we mixed it up_ ," Duke lied. " _She seemed so bubbly on the outside, but inside Heather was full of pain. I tried to give her a helping hand, but now I know I wasn't enough to save her._ " Duke smiled a misty smile into the cameras, eyes batting up and down with fake tears. They loved her. They all loved her. Heather changed the channel yet again, one after one after the next, and it was all the same. _Fuck, Heather, how many networks did you have on speed dial?_ She couldn't bear it any more.

Heather wrenched off her pink bridesmaid's heel, and threw it at the screen as hard as she could. It only bounced off. Heather screamed; she couldn't help it. She marched over, reclaimed her shoe, and used the heel to hit the glass over Heather Duke's smug face again and again until it finally cracked. The television burst into white static for a single satisfying moment then turned black. Heather kicked it over on its face for good measure.

She went to bed on a mattress in the attic, dusty and awful and closed-in. She was tired, as if whatever had happened to her over her burial had cost something. Not that she was any of the stupid things J.D. had suggested. She'd seen a couple of horror-movie posters in his bedroom - how lame. Ketchup blood and green rubber monsters were for kids. Heather rolled over, sleep catching up to her behind her eyes.

She figured J.D. wouldn't be that upset at her amusing vandalism. Annoyed, yes, but he'd provoked Heather on purpose and so part of him would be gleeful he had succeeded. He'd soon learn that he couldn't afford to provoke her without similar inconvenience to himself.

Heather had been asleep and dreaming something that felt reasonably peaceful, if kind of dull. She came half awake to hear a door open. Nothing to worry about; go back to sleep. She heard a phone being picked up - weird, a phone at this hour. Something about buying. Who'd be that desperate for a TV? Later, still drifting through sleep, she heard two raised men's voices, arguing. It wasn't the same excitement as two guys directly fighting over her, especially not since one of them was as old as her dad, but it was good enough. _Good work, Heather._ There were no sounds even close to someone walking up to the attic. She turned over and rested on.

—

Heather Duke unwrapped a Kit Kat from under her pillow. She split the chocolate bar carefully in half, bit a piece off each end, then dipped it in the cocoa in front of her to use as a straw. The triple chocolate hit her in a rush. She'd done this when she was a little kid, when she and her friends didn't care about looking silly in public. Her bedroom door was locked and she looked _very good_ in public, thank you, or at least ninety-nine percent of local news stations agreed about that.

Duke's true prediction, her _magic_ , was a secret she'd kept hugged to herself. No news reader could get that out of her. She'd read all the books, urban mages and lost princesses raised by peasants and cartoon superheroines, and the first rule was always that you didn't tell people you had special powers.

Heather McNamara was a total fake. Duke was different. She'd always hoped the cards really spoke to her and said something meaningful, even if she also learnt a lot of card tricks and practiced all her mystic speeches in front of her mirror. Those tricks were just to make sure. She had power.

Foretelling Heather Chandler's death was the first time Duke had actually done something that the normal laws of science couldn't explain away. The first and only time, a traitorous voice within her said. But surely there would be others. She'd drawn the Star for herself with Veronica and that meant something, though it was true she'd drawn the Two of Wands and the Page of Cups and the Jester for herself at other times.

Duke wiped her chocolate-coated fingers carefully with a monogrammed linen napkin. She set her cocoa carefully aside on a completely different surface. Then she laid out her tarot spread again.

"My powers are real," she said into the empty room. Just reminding herself. Midnight ticked over in her moon-and-stars clock on the wall.

She turned over three simple cards. The Highwayman, a black-shrouded man on a black horse with eyes that glowed brimstone in the night. The Moon Maiden, a pale slender woman with midnight black hair and half her face hidden by a mask, her blue dress merging with dark water mixed with stars. And the card of Death again.

Duke and her friends had of course picked cards for each other, before they had even shared the trend outside their group. Heather Chandler was the Red Queen, no-prizes-for-guessing-that, the Queen of swords and rubies and fire and blood. Duke had secretly wanted that card for herself; she'd once loved stories about women with swords. But instead she had to pretend she wanted the High Priestess, mistress of the cards. Heather McNamara was the Page of Light, a golden young man - or young woman, it was hard to tell - with sun-tossed curls and a brilliant smile, laughing joyously at something out of the picture. And by popular vote, Veronica was the Moon Maiden, although maybe she'd have preferred the Ace of Wands.

The Moon Maiden; mysterious and attractive, but also two-faced and deceptive. Perfect fit. And wasn't Veronica dating ( _ugh! Fucking was a better word for it, gross_ ) a guy who was practically a highwayman, the sort of guy who brought guns to school for fun?

Duke stared at the Death card again. "You don't always mean literal death. You can just mean change," she said. "Veronica changes boyfriends, _that's_ a big surprise, no one could _possibly_ have seen that coming. It's not that I care about Veronica's boyfriends or how many times she bangs them on the neighbour's swingset. I'd just like her to stay away from _my_ swingset, thanks. And she can feel free _not_ to tell me about any of it."

There was a chilly breeze in Duke's bedroom. She looked up at her closed window, seeing the glint of glass in the slit between the curtains. The curtains weren't moving. She looked at the gap between her door and the floor next, but the thick pile of her carpet was unblown.

Duke put her arms by her sides and stiffened them rigidly. The card on her table was moving, and she was not touching the card or the table. The cold wind grew stronger. Only the Death card was moved, only the Death card was lifted. It rose into the air by itself, touching nothing, showing its full face to her. It bobbed up and down.

This was magic, real power. It couldn't be anything else. And Duke was absolutely terrified. She wasn't doing it; she couldn't make it stop. She stared helplessly at Death before her, her Death, a grinning psychopomp waiting for her in the air at midnight.

The card seemed to grow in size. It rushed toward Duke's face as if borne by a mighty tempest. Then she saw nothing but Death, Death flying toward her eyes. She understood the message.

She would be next. She would die. She would be murdered.

She collapsed on her desk in a dead faint.


	6. Shattered Glass

_Who'll pour the wine?  
_ _I, said the Swine.  
_ _I'll pour the wine and tread on the glass  
_ _For poor Cock Robin._

—

Heather didn't comment on the new-delivered TV; it wasn't even a good TV. Someone had played what sounded like a bad action movie on it half the night, constant explosions over and over. She hadn't got enough sleep.

"Being dead is so boring," she whined. J.D.'s patience looked to be hanging by a thread so thin you couldn't even use it as floss. Maybe she wouldn't snap it, just yet.

"Read a book." _Since you broke the TV last time you watched_ , he implied in his glare.

"I'm popular; I have people to do that shit for me." That and cheat guides. Heather was never into doing something the hard way when you could do it the easy way or make some nerd do it for you. "I'm hungry. Did you bring me food?"

A Snappy Snack Shack plastic bag slid over the counter to her. It was cold. "Spare turbo dog."

"Has anything resembling a vegetable ever been near this thing?" Heather poked experimentally at it.

"It might have been a vegetarian dog, before they fed it into the sausage machine," J.D. said. "Along with a kitty, the worst parts of the cow, and gelatin filler swept up from the floors of the knackery."

 _Boys are gross._ Heather rolled her eyes, but let the conversation rise to a relatively civil note. "Everything at the Snappy Snack Shack is crap and gives you pimples, but I actually like their corn nuts. BQ flavor only. Just for future reference."

"Strongly disagree. Classic cheese," J.D. said. He put on an electric kettle, looking weirdly domesticated. He dug around for some coffee.

"Tea," Heather said. Her favorite sort was rose-hip and rooibos, this artsy blend sold in an unbearably tacky hippie packet design at the farmers' market two towns over, but she wouldn't push the envelope. She was surprised to see J.D. scrounge up lemon rather than the expected boring-black.

"I'm gonna bite," J.D. said, baring his teeth maybe a touch too literally. It didn't look like a smile. "Why and how did the Heathers come about? You can't seriously all be called Heather."

"It's the same reason why you're called Jason. Don't give me that look, of _course_ I snooped at the box with certificates and registrations and things," Heather said. "Did you know you were born right here in Sherwood? I guess you moved on too fast to remember. Popular baby names of the seventies, isn't it fun?"

(She wasn't going to tell him yet what her dad told her after the meet-and-greet. _It isn't the first time I've used him, princess, but you don't remember, do you? You weren't even in school yet._ Her dad had laughed, and Heather mentally checked out like she normally did when he rolled around in the sentimental-reminiscing like a pig in mud. _You whacked his kid over the head with a pink Easy-Bake Oven. Gave him a good scar, I think. His mom had about seven kinds of kittens, but I told her, if my little girl beats up a boy she had good reason for it. Sent her away soon enough._ It had been pre-emptive revenge, Heather thought.)

J.D. put Heather's tea down. It was midnight-black coffee for him, definitely not clichéd at all.

"How did the Heathers begin?" Heather continued. "I got together with Heather first; we made a great team. Same name and same interests. The only difference is that she wants people to like her, but I expect people to like me. And then there was Heather in the background. I always intended Heather to join us, ever since the beginning, and she was fine once I taught her to get her nose out of a book all the time and make better friends."

"Hold on with all the Heathers. I take it Big Heather was first to be assimilated, followed by Ironing Board Heather?"

Duh. Heather rolled her eyes briefly at his stupidity. "Yep. Veronica used to be a Girl Scout, badges for cookie selling and knot-tying and reading encyclopedias. She wanted more; she wasn't dweeby and grateful for half a stale cookie crumb like Betty Finn. She wanted to learn to fly.

"An eagle sees a tortoise and thinks, mmm, that sweet meat sure looks good, but I can't get it inside that shell. In the meantime, the tortoise thinks, boy, I sure wish I could fly like one of those eagles. So the tortoise says to the eagle, hello, friend, how about picking me up. The eagle picks up the tortoise and flies as high as it can. It drops the tortoise. Sometimes, I guess, the eagle drops the tortoise then swoops down to pick it up in mid-air a few times, just to have some fun. Then the tortoise smashes into the ground. The game's supposed to end that way. The eagle gets that sweet, sweet meat. That eagle's happy.

"But sometimes, the tortoise learns to fly. Or, it turns out not to be a tortoise but another eagle. That's what I taught Veronica. You want to fuck with the eagles, you gotta learn how to fly."

"Truly Aesopian," J.D. said.

"Who was Aesop?" Heather said, all I'm-popular-and-don't-know-geeky-stuff. He didn't bite.

"What about Martha Dunnstock?" J.D. asked, with the over-casual air that symbolized he was a lot more interested than he pretended to be.

Heather didn't think he was dumb enough to ask her that without getting most of the story from Veronica first, if not from others too, so she couldn't afford to lie.

"What brought that on?" she challenged.

"Graffiti, courtesy of Heather-And-Stuff. You were only the second place winner," J.D. said. "Seems Martha went first."

Heather scowled at him for putting it that way. Almost three years later, and Martha still managed to steal something that belonged to her.

"It wasn't my fault. The counselor said so," she said. For all Heather generally liked talking about herself, she'd been so glad to dump the mandatory counselling sessions. "Martha Dumptruck was a fat loser who probably tried to drown herself in the kitchen sink when she was in diapers. She took a nosedive into traffic in freshman year, I think it was officially ruled an accident. There's no story there."

J.D.'s lips were set in a thin, angry line. "Not your fault, I see. You seem pretty keen on saying that. I suppose you never said anything to Martha that might have possibly influenced her actions."

"I think I said a lot of stuff," Heather admitted. "Heather and Heather did it too; it wasn't just me. Veronica's done similar things because I asked her. What if I told you, go out and hang yourself in a potter's field, would you do it?" She took a single step toward him. "Go hang yourself. What are you waiting for?" She was amused that got a bit of a flinch from him; maybe another nice little weak spot there. But he wasn't reaching for any ropes. "Don't want to? There you go. That's exactly how much I was to blame for Martha's death. Her mom clearly doesn't blame me; she's our maid."

Mrs. Dunnstock cleaned Heather's room and washed her clothes while she was at school. All Heather saw of her was the occasional Mills and Boon cover flashing out of her bag, those times when she stayed late to finish cleaning the bathrooms and was still somewhere in the background when Heather came home.

"I'm surprised she didn't smother you in your sleep," J.D. said. Weirdly, there was real anger in him, as if he was stupid enough to care about a stupid person who died three years ago and he didn't even know her. "You bullied her daughter to death."

"What, like that's bad?" Heather faced him down. He had to know part of her attitude was refusal to surrender; she'd rather go down an iron-plated bitch with unbreakable steel for a heart than like a sentimental fool with a blotchy red face from crying too hard. "There is no such thing as good and bad. People are either charming or tedious. Oscar Wilde," Heather said, and for a moment J.D. looked surprised that she could actually quote some dead-and-moldering Euro guy. "If I contributed to ridding the world of a tedious person, and I'm not saying I did, it was the most moral act I've ever done."

And besides, Heather had had her own reasons. She just hadn't chosen to whine to the world about them.

J.D. set his cup down with a slow, deliberate clink. He'd gripped the mug hard enough to leave red marks on his hands, or maybe that was just because it was hot. "Killing you wouldn't be a crime, it would be a public service," he said.

Heather went on glaring at him. She knew J.D. was dangerous, more dangerous than she'd initially thought when she recruited him. Someone who brought a gun to school was incredibly fucked up. It bothered her that no one but her had seemed to think that, and she'd died the next day so she didn't have time to bring them to the right way of thinking. She stood her ground anyway.

"It looks like you're the perfect murder. After all, you're already dead," J.D. said.

Heather remembered hearing something about farm kids who kept pigs as pets. It was harder to enjoy bacon if you'd named the pig Petunia and frolicked with it in the back garden hanging dandelion chains around its neck, or whatever the hell it was that you did with a pet pig. She hoped something like the same principle applied here.

Maybe she should ask J.D. to call her Petunia.

"I hear body disposal's a bitch," Heather teased.

"My dad has a woodchipper."

Heather threw her mug at his face. He cried out in pain as the porcelain broke. She shoved him backward into the TV room while he was off guard. He brought down half the contents of a shelf full of videos with him, which was very satisfying.

Heather didn't usually do physical violence. Devastate them emotionally was her style, inflict a thousand cuts of cruel social isolation, strip away the last tattered flaps of self esteem until there was nothing but blood and tears left, rip out hearts in an elegantly metaphorical way. Heather Chandler frequently said loudly appalling things with a body that literally every man wanted to fuck and the combination was irresistible.

Heather's boots crunched over shattered china. The sudden rush of intensity that came with this fight made her think: _God, what have I been missing out on?_

Another part of her thought: how much of Don't-Hit-Girls ever sunk into him, if any?

And yet another part of her was ticking over, briefly considering: reaction provoked to mommy-left-you, probably because she had a horrible kid like you; reaction provoked to go-hang-yourself; wouldn't it be Heather Chandler's normal good luck in finding exactly the right button to press if his mom actually went out and hanged herself?

J.D. rose up and grabbed her. Damn, he was fast. Heather barely saw his knee come up to slam her head. For a moment, it was like she saw stars - those sparkling brown dots on the edge of consciousness when you closed your eyes. Her flailing hands reached out to find a tall lamp. It came down over his head. J.D. got the worst of it on his back, but they both fell together. They rolled around on the floor. There was another satisfying crunch as a small glass table shattered. Something cut Heather's cheek and she'd never felt so alive. There was blood on J.D.'s ear as well. They fought in the middle of the shards, painful on Heather's back. She sort of understood this, that it was better to feel something than nothing at all, even if that something was burning pain and hands tightening around your arms.

He wasn't particularly tall or tough, but he was stronger than Heather was. She couldn't budge him and make him fall down again, much as she wanted to slam him down in the middle of broken glass.

So she went completely limp, letting J.D. pin her down. He glared at her.

"Fuck me, this is hot," Heather said, and smiled up at him with a glittering, inviting grin.

She watched J.D.'s face change from confused to comprehending, followed by self-loathing and then horror. Served him right. He flung himself off her as if he'd been trying to hold down a poisonous snake. He left, running out and slamming the door.

Heather slowly rose, and brushed a shower of glittering fragments off her shirt.

"You had no right to look at me like that. You're just as bad as me, if not worse. I can always make people as bad as I want them to be," she said into the empty room.

She picked up a photograph of a light-haired woman that had fallen on the ground. The glass was cracked over her face, but it didn't look like the picture was damaged. If Heather was in a vengeful mood, she'd feed it to the garbage disposal. But she simply put it back on the counter.

She stooped among the amateur videotapes. She'd given them a cursory look before; best case scenario was blackmail-worthy or at least embarrassing footage of Young Jason Dean, worst case scenario was gross amateur porn of an old guy. She took out a handkerchief she'd forgotten in her jeans pocket, so she didn't have to touch anything. Heather's handkerchiefs came from Grandma Chandler every birthday and Christmas, pink with hand-embroidered roses and always accompanied by a pathetic five-dollar check she didn't even bother to cash.

All the cassettes were dated, followed by the name of a building. There were too many public sounding places, offices and apartments and libraries and halls, for scenario two to really be a possibility. Heather idly sorted them back into the date order they'd been in. That almost made it a dead certainty J.D. wasn't the amateur cameraman: he was so into the rebel-without-a-cause image that organization was probably to him as capitalism to Jewish guys with huge beards.

She'd noticed that one older tape seemed more often revisited than the others around it, the writing on it more smudged by touch and the surface of both tape and container absolutely clear of dust. _James Brown Miller Memorial Library, Texas_ , it read.

In all her life, Heather had never seen even one interesting thing about a library. What was so special about this one? She put the old tape on. She'd some time to kill, and a bucket if she needed one to puke in.

The James Brown Miller Memorial Library was deserted, abandoned. Several of the letters in the sign were missing and the rest were dusty and wind-torn. It was a four-story building with most of the windows smashed. Heather didn't see even the most dedicated book-fucker coming here.

Then there was a flash of movement, a woman's hand waving in one of the windows. Heather heard a cry like a trapped animal somewhere outside the camera's range, next a faint sound like running feet pounding against ground.

And then the library imploded.

No more James Brown Miller Memorial Library. No more woman waving in the window.

Seems that was how she died.

Heather rewound and watched again, part morbid curiosity, part maybe-it-wasn't-what-it-looked-like. Things clicked into place.

She knew why Mr. Dean was in Sherwood and what he was looking for. It was her.


	7. Target Protection

_Who'll bear the lantern?  
_ _I, said the Crow,  
_ _Hang the lantern on my bough,  
_ _Shine on poor Cock Robin._

—

Heather Duke wished she hadn't turned down King David's offer of a date at Heather's funeral. David Harper, Remington College man. Deigning to choose little old _her_. She should have felt honored, but she hated the Remington parties and freaked out at the thought of any of those guys laying so much as a finger on her. Wrinkling her clothes, touching her skin, and worse. She wanted to vomit at the thought.

And she was through with vomiting.

David was fairly tall and muscular and played some sort of sport; she'd tuned Heather out when she boasted about him and had no idea which one. He could have protected her.

How funny, wasn't it? She was finally popular, the girl every news network in town and beyond wanted to talk to, the girl who told Heather McNamara and others what to do and they did it. And it was all going to be snatched away from her when Veronica and her asshole boyfriend murdered her. Probably because she knew their secret now.

She wished like hell she hadn't teased Veronica before. She'd known Heather McNamara's prediction referenced Veronica, but she'd pictured a quarrel and the sharp side of Veronica's tongue, some accident or Veronica just knowing more about the death than she let on. How stupid of her not to assume the worst. She couldn't go to the cops and say, 'My psychic powers, which are real, told me that Veronica and her filthy boyfriend are murderers and I'm their next target' - or could she?

She needed a bodyguard. She grabbed her lunch tray and made Heather McNamara come with her to sit with Kurt and Ram. They were the biggest and strongest guys on the football team, probably the biggest and strongest in Westerburg. Duke had known both boys since pre-kindergarten; vaguely remembered playing in sandpits with them and such. If you couldn't trust guys you'd known that long, who could you trust? And if anything about that rumor about Veronica's double date with Kurt and Ram and what she'd done with both of them was true, maybe she'd score a point in stealing Kurt away from Veronica.

"When's the next game?" Duke asked Kurt. "I can't wait to, like, cheer you on."

"Football season's over," she heard back. Duke stopped herself from flushing red like a little kid while Kurt and Ram laughed and high-fived each other at her ignorance.

"I think we should hang out more," Duke said. "Are you free tonight?"

She felt affronted to see the boys confer with each other, as if they weren't convinced her offer was the best possible one. They whispered Veronica's name and talked about Heather Number Three as if Duke couldn't hear them.

Duke hated it when people called the Heathers with numbers. Heather Chandler had always been Number One, Heather McNamara two, making Duke the pathetic last place winner. If Veronica had the same name as the rest of them, Duke thought she'd probably have been bumped up to the new number two. No one would dare to topple Heather Chandler from her pedestal as One. Duke thought of the note in her bedroom drawer, the one with 'If I Die Please Open This' written on it. She'd get her posthumous revenge if nothing else.

The boys turned back to her. "Sure, let's double," Kurt said. "Can you get us on TV?"

"Just - Ram, can we go somewhere nice instead of the way it was the other night?" Heather McNamara asked pleadingly.

"I'll tell you a secret," Duke said. "I think Veronica and her boyfriend might try pranking you guys, you know, like the way he got you on his first day of school. I don't think Veronica likes what you've said about her lately. All you guys have to do is be prepared, okay? And don't tell a single word to her."

Fragments of a plan began to slip into place. And Duke smiled and flirted at, after all, the promising prospect of a date with the most popular guy in Westerburg. It was fitting. She and Kurt would have a lovely long night together.

—

Heather Chandler felt like a movie star: big sunglasses to hide her face, anonymizing jeans and jacket and dyed hair. People barely looked at or noticed her, which she tried not to be annoyed at since she supposed it was what she wanted. She wished she wasn't on foot. Her wedge heels were starting to hurt.

That and the glass cuts on her face, and the bruises on her arms. Special abilities to heal such things would've come in handy.

She eventually hunted J.D. down in the Snappy Snack Shack, leaning against the wall with a bulging grocery bag and a slushie in hand, drinking like he wanted to give himself an excuse to stay longer.

"So is it you or your dad who gets off on the film of the demolition that killed your mom?" she said.

She saw a tightening grip, overstretched knuckles, narrowing eyes, and darkened face, a network of tensing muscle and veins under skin like a clay mask in the process of cracking open. Heather played him like she'd play a violin if she owned one. And if she actually knew how to play violin, as opposed to more interesting instruments. "You picked a public place for this. Smart choice," he grated.

"Don't flatter yourself," Heather said. "I'm actually not scared you'll fly into a misogynistic rage and strangle me to death. I'm a people person, I know these things."

"You're a sapient piranha," J.D. complimented her.

Heather mock-bowed. "Eat or be eaten."

But J.D. didn't seem disposed to keep talking. He froze up, looked away, and would've run if Heather hadn't blocked the only exit for him. So she elaborated further. "If all I knew of your dad was he yelled at you for a busted TV, who cares? Most parents would do that, except for mine, of course; they'd buy me a new one. But there's more to it than that. Those videos are fucked up. You ever watch the library one?"

His voice was quieter than she'd ever heard from him before, and broken down into fragments of sentences at a time. He still didn't dare to look at her. "Most of them are normal. Don't care. Don't need to watch. I was already there that time. I stay out of his way. It's fucked up and it's done. Makes no difference."

"It makes a difference all right. You should pay more attention," Heather needled. "I could help you, for the right price, of course. Speaking of attention, you're in deep shit."

Truth be told, Heather was herself discomfited to see her ex-best friend Veronica, her _fucking betraying murdering traitor_ best friend, walking into the Snappy Snack Shack. No doubt darling Veronica had come in quest of her errant boyfriend, the boyfriend that Heather had distracted away from her. Heather bent down and pretended to look at the dairy-free cheese squeezes, like she was just another stranger who definitely wasn't talking to the weirdo in black over there.

But Veronica had always had brains. She saw Heather. She dropped her cherry stick, then and there. Two and two added up to four-and-a-half.

" _Heather_?"


	8. Breaking Up Is Hard To Do

_Who'll lend a knife?  
_ _I, said the canary bird,  
_ _I'll mark the sward  
_ _For poor Cock Robin._

—

"God, I need another smoke."

J.D. passed Veronica his lighter. She accepted it without touching his hand at all.

"I knew you moved towns all the time. It was one of the first things you told me," Veronica said. "I'll admit I was looking for some temporary fun, preferably of a horizontal nature. You delivered on that front. Then, whoops, we murdered my best friend. _You_ murdered my best friend."

"Worst enemy," J.D. added.

"That too. And you lied to me about something pretty damn major," Veronica said. "She's not dead. Unless I'm hallucinating. If all in life is illusion, I'm seeing the psychotic break equivalent of three dancing giraffes in pink chiffon tutus."

"It's real. Kind of a funny story," J.D. said.

"Long ago, I wrote this big prepared speech for any unwanted suitors," Veronica said. "How did it go? Thanks for the not-exactly-lovely evening, Blank, but since you lied to me about killing my best friend, I think we're done here. Dead relationship. Imagine a dodo swallows a doornail, then gets hit by an asteroid the size of Brazil. That's the degree of deadness I'm going for here."

Heather was back inside the Snappy Snack Shack, leaving them alone. She could choose to be tactful when she wanted; she just generally didn't.

"Heather was buried on Saturday and dug up on Tuesday, surprisingly chirpy," J.D. said. "Does that raise any questions you want answered? You're a genius - you could help."

He was reaching out to Veronica, desperate, but softer and more restrained than she'd expected. If there had been a brick wall in front of her, Veronica would have slammed her head against it and indulged in a loud screech or three.

"I'm not convinced," she said.

"If we want to kill her again, we should at least know her weak points," J.D. offered.

"That's not funny, asshole." Veronica smoked aggressively. "At least I get to tell Heather Duke to go to hell via the express route. She somehow figured out that we killed Heather. Did you know that? No, you were busy ignoring me for Undead Heather. Can't convict a girl for murder if the _habeas corpus_ is walking around complaining about it."

Heather Chandler slammed the door of the Snappy Snack Shack behind her and joined them. "You losers finished the tragic-romantic-comedy moment? Well done and fuck you."

Veronica gave her the finger.

Suddenly, Heather grabbed J.D. by the head and felt through his hair. It was far too intimate a gesture for Veronica's boyfriend - but he was her ex now, so she wasn't in a position to object too much. J.D. disentangled himself quickly, but not before Heather grinned at something she'd found.

"I gave you that scar," she said. "Under your hair."

"The hell?" J.D. said. Veronica thought the same; she hadn't even known there was a scar there.

"You don't remember. Not surprising; I was in preschool and you should have been. But my dad remembered," Heather said. "I hit you over the head with an Easy-Bake Oven. Your mom ever tell you how you got that scar?"

J.D. stared at Heather like he was seeing a real ghost, his cigarette neglected between his fingers. The fire crept close to his fingertips. "I think I recall ... a blonde girl," he said slowly. "Did you also tear my book? I remember something like that."

"Yeah. I think that's why you pissed me off," Heather said. "I couldn't read yet. And then there was this stupid little boy, showing off. So pretentious."

"You mean I wasn't paying any attention to you," J.D. said. "I had to get five stitches."

"You deserved it. Young Heather was very sensible," Heather said. "That makes three times your dad came here. First when you were born. Second when you were still too young to remember. Third time's the charm. There's a reason he keeps coming back.

"He's looking for the most important person in Sherwood. He's looking for _me_."

Heather's self-conceit was as intact as ever, beyond the grave. Veronica inwardly rolled her eyes. There was nothing exceptional about Heather Chandler, beyond an ego so massive that aliens from Alpha Centauri would notice it a million years later and marvel at how something so lacking in depth could be so breathtakingly massive in size.

"It's because of what your dad did, and what I did accidentally when that waddling crybaby Martha - " Veronica noticed that Chandler's speech seemed to suddenly change direction, just as J.D. scowled. "It's about people who can kill," she said. "Maybe he's looking for Heather and Heather as well, since they saw this coming, but they got it wrong. I think they're different to me. I don't think they really have power." She sounded like she was guessing; Veronica thought that part of Heather just didn't want to believe anyone other than her could have something special about them.

"Can you tell Heather Duke you're alive, and also to go fuck herself sideways with an unusually large terrapin?" Veronica interrupted. "She threw out some broad hints that not only did she know J.D. and I did it - "

"Not so much you," J.D. muttered.

" - but she made sure I knew exactly where she's going to be tonight," Veronica finished. "The surprise secret I'm not supposed to know is that she and Heather are dating Kurt and Ram. I guess she expects Kurt and Ram to beat J.D. up and force some hard evidence out of us."

"Damn, that's cold, Veronica," Heather said. "Heather's on my personal shit list too, but I didn't realize you hated Heather that much." She glared at Veronica and J.D., her head moving side to side like a blonde cobra. "Heather's practically a preschooler. Locked herself in the bathroom and wouldn't come out at the first, last and only Remington party I took her to. A cooze, a waste of time. She doesn't understand the score and how to pay your debts. You were even worse, Veronica."

From the look on J.D.'s face, he understood exactly what Heather was saying - and despised it with everything in him.

"At least the Remington guys would put something extra in her drink first," Heather said. "Kurt and Ram aren't nearly as subtle."

"I know. I double-dated with Heather the night of the funeral." Veronica caught J.D. turning his head in surprise. "I would have told you, but you were probably with Heather. I left Kurt flailing in a pile of cow shit while Ram and Heather McNamara did the wild monkey dance. She always gets drunk, fucks Ram, feels mopey about it the next day. Typical."

"Kurt and Ram know better than to cross me," Heather Chandler said. "Now I'm dead, that's a huge fucking mess. Where did you say they were going?"

"Date rapists or Heathers. Tough choice," J.D. said, but he was already moving toward where he'd left his bike.

Heather realized too late that she should've travelled in Veronica's car if she wanted a comfortable ride. Oh well. That thing was a huge ugly tank; Heather's own precious red baby was much better. She hoped nothing bad had happened to it while she was dead. _Time for a new one if something had._ She gave J.D. directions above the roar of his bike.

"What's up with the groceries?" Heather asked. She'd seen a flash of egg carton and mini flour bag, hanging next to her on the back of the bike; totally mundane.

"I thought of making revenge brownies. You're not getting any. ... Admittedly, it was a lame revenge plot, but it was either that or hydrochloric acid shampoo," J.D. said.

"Veronica doesn't like chocolate. Heather and Heather think she's such a lucky bitch," Heather said. "I like chocolate just fine, but it doesn't get the better of me."

"Then revenge pancakes it is. One of few recipes my mom was actually good at cooking, so prepare to be amazed at what you're not getting."

"You brought your gun?" Heather asked, sliding her hands further down along the coat.

"Stop that. Yes, but only blanks."

"Probably for the best," Heather said.

—

Heather Duke clung to the upper branches of the tree in the graveyard. Kurt and Ram bayed like bloodhounds below her. She was terrified. Ram took a few steps back then ran barrelling into the tree, and she felt the trunk shake under her.

"Stop it. Please." She tried to say that, but her words were choked by sobs and tears, and she hated herself for that. She hadn't climbed trees since she was a little kid. With her bloody, painful knee and ripped stockings, Duke knew there was a good reason for that.

"Don't be shy," Kurt called. Heather McNamara sat on a stone grave next to Ram, looking up and saying nothing.

Duke's fingers scraped along the bark as she tried to hold herself up. She forced a deep, ragged breath into herself.

"You're supposed to wait," she said. "For them. They'll come and you can have them both. Revenge."

Kurt and Ram only laughed at her. "Why wait?" Kurt said. "Don't be a cocktease, Heather. Get down or get thrown down."

No one came in the distance, no sound of motorbike or car or sight of shadows rising and falling in the hills.

Duke thought she'd given the perfect bait for Veronica. She'd hold a seance by Heather's grave, she'd told Veronica, all by herself and her cards. She'd find out what sort of justice and righteous vengeance Heather's ghost would want. Given Heather's general character, that probably meant nothing less than a firing squad.

Enter Veronica and that asshole, making their move; then Kurt and Ram would finish them off. They both wanted revenge on Jason Dean and his blank bullets. Kurt wanted Veronica.

But Duke's precious plan wasn't working. Kurt had brought a cask of beer from god-knew-where, the boys and Heather McNamara got drunk, and everything turned to shit. _Please, come, Veronica. If you come and get me out of this, I won't even hurt you._

Heather McNamara stood up. "Lift me," she asked Ram. "I can get her down for you."

There was nowhere for Duke to run to. She clung stiffly to the tree, scared of Heather now. _I shouldn't be surprised. I always hated you and Veronica_ , she thought. _Heather Chandler told both of you to laugh at me and hurt me and you always did it._

The drunk boys hoisted McNamara with a lot of difficulty and laughter. McNamara, oddly, didn't join the laughter. She gracelessly clambered up, closer and closer.

"It's okay," she whispered to Duke. "I won't let them violate you."

Duke allowed her to edge next to her. The two girls sat together on the branch, both of them away and free of Kurt and Ram. Heather McNamara did nothing when Ram called at her to hurry up and push Duke down.

"Let's throw rocks at them," Kurt said. "They're coming down sooner or later."

"They're going to win," Heather McNamara whispered. "There's only one way where they can't hurt you."

And then, out from the folds of her cheerleading skirt, McNamara drew a long sharp steak knife. It glittered in the moonlight, particularly the silvered edge of it. She offered it to Duke, black handle first.

"Kill yourself," she said.


	9. There Will Be Blood Tonight

_Who'll lay the ghost?  
_ _I, said the wren,  
_ _I'll ring my bell again,  
_ _In the muddy fen,  
_ _And lay Cock Robin's ghost._

—

Duke shoved Heather McNamara with both hands. She fell off the tree, on top of Kurt and Ram. Satisfying crunch.

 _Heather would_ never _use the word 'violate'_ , Duke thought. She was so frightened she felt herself shaking. Her teeth chattered against her will. Her spine was trembling ice water, shook and spilt like pieces of broken glass.

 _If you're not Heather, then what the hell are you? And isn't hell_ exactly _the right word for it?_

Duke screamed into the night, wordless and terrified, and nothing answered her. She felt the first rock fly past her head. It had been a big one. Kurt and Ram, hurt now, weren't playing games any more.

She almost wished for the knife. She saw it lying on the ground. She'd rather be dead and bleeding out than under Kurt or Ram. Scream, hide, run and drown herself.

Up on the hill, J.D. saw the girl in the tree first. He stopped the bike dead, making it soundless, then ran down while the scream rang out. The three on the ground wouldn't see him coming until it was too late, a dark man in a dark coat. The pale gravestones and moving people could barely be seen in the moonlight.

Heather had a couple of preparations to make for her grand entrance first. She picked up the grocery bag.

"Greetings and salutations. You two mewling dickweasels had best vacate this depth of depravity while you can still walk."

J.D. lit his lighter under his chin, turning his face into a skull in the dark. Ram swore in fright, then got back his liquid courage.

"Fuck. Heather was right. That pussy came after all," Ram said.

"Get him," Kurt decided.

They were both on J.D. at the same time; they got in a few good punches. Then he pulled the gun.

"You only shoot blanks, you fucking fag," Kurt gloated. J.D. slipped past his thrown punch, moved his hand to the back of Ram's skull. The gun was pressed close to bone.

He fired.

Heather saw both boys fall. Only Kurt was left standing, his bullet-shaped head suddenly clear in the moonlight. Then Kurt dropped down too.

"Ram? Get up, fuck, oh fuck. He's - "

Kurt touched the back of Ram's skull. His hand came away bloodstained, black in the night. The blank bullet was still charged with enough force to shatter bone.

You could kill people with blanks, if you shot close enough. J.D. probably already knew that the first time he fired blanks into Kurt and Ram. Ram was dead, but something had happened to J.D. too.

J.D. didn't resist Kurt grabbing him and slamming him to the ground, twice in a row. He was limp as a corpse himself. Then Kurt went for the gun.

Heather, white as a ghost, stepped in. She'd emptied the bag of flour over her head. Mundane, but very terrifying in the dark.

"Heather!" Duke screamed. She fell bonelessly out of the tree, landing hard. Kurt dropped the gun in shock. Only Heather McNamara didn't react at all, sitting and watching.

"I'm Heather's ghost," Heather assured Kurt. "Fear me." He screamed like a little girl. No - Heather had never screamed in fright when she was a little girl. Kurt Kelly screamed like the paltry pathetic pantswetting little boy he was.

Somewhere inside her, Heather Chandler wasn't opposed to the death penalty for date rapists. Or even just for people who happened to annoy her in some way.

And this time Heather knew the power she had. She was untouchable, the strongest person in Sherwood. She wanted to feign her death and she made the entire town believe her. She murdered Martha Dunnstock.

She understood, now, exactly how she had killed Martha.

"I'm here to take you to the grave with me, Kurt," Heather said. "Pick up that knife. Do it. Good boy. Now put it into your stomach."

Heather Chandler told Martha Dunnstock to kill herself, and Martha obeyed. Now Kurt was the same, caught in the thrall of Heather's power. Heather took one step toward him and Kurt cringed back. But he was still trying to resist her, holding the knife and looking confused.

Heather raised a clenched hand. In it, she held an egg that Kurt couldn't see. "This is your beating heart I hold in my hand," she said. "Believe me. I own your life, Kurt."

She crushed the egg. Albumen dripped out between her fingers. Kurt cried out like she really was breaking his heart.

"Kill yourself," Heather repeated, and stepped closer and closer to Kurt. He collapsed back on the ground. Heather stood over him. He held the knife, almost but not quite doing it, sniffling and snuffling and crying like a pig being slaughtered. "Stab yourself up and under the ribs," Heather said.

"No. I won't let you do it." Heather McNamara walked to Kurt's side. She dropped to her knees and looked up at Heather with a startlingly hateful gaze. Heather Chandler had never seen McNamara look at her so. "Two blood sacrifices stain your soul. They granted you too much power already. I won't let you take this one too," McNamara said.

And then it was Heather McNamara who slid the knife into Kurt. Blood spurted and there was a horrible long cry. Up and under the ribs, into the heart. McNamara left the knife there, and touched Kurt's cooling cheek with her right hand.

"I used to like him," Heather McNamara said. "But he was a monster. I know that now. Almost as bad a monster as you." She was looking at Heather. She lowered her bloody hands and brushed them on her black skirt. "Look at me now. I'm a cheerleader," she said.

Veronica had come rushing down from the hill behind them, too late to intervene. It seemed she wasn't able to say anything, her breath heaving too much. Heather Duke was on her hands and knees on the ground, bleeding from her fall. The two clung to each other, Duke so desperate she'd wrapped her arms around Veronica's knees and held on like a limpet.

Heather McNamara's accusing gaze fixed Heather Chandler. "You murdered me," she said. Heather was so unused to that look from Heather McNamara that she couldn't answer back, couldn't fight her.

Next came Duke. "You betrayed me," Heather McNamara said.

Heather McNamara nodded at Veronica. "I liked you, a little bit. I thought you were funny and clever. But you never helped me, and I was happy that the darkness in you would kindle another's."

Heather could hear J.D. vomiting on the grass. "Martha," he said, slow and distraught. He looked up at Heather McNamara, but sensed someone else. "Martha Dunnstock. The one who died. You took over the body of one of your murderers. I can feel you. I can feel everyone. Please - I understand how you feel. You had nothing left and it was bleak and blank and all you knew was torment. She made you want to die.

"Then you were dead, and wanted revenge. I guess you had some power too. But you couldn't screw your courage to the sticking-place. If 'twere done, 'twere best done quickly. You had every reason to kill. But something in you didn't want to, so you warned Chandler first. You might be the only good person here. Please." He sounded as if he didn't even know what he was begging for. Heather McNamara looked down at him, with an expression not so far from the real Heather when she saw someone unpopular.

"Your fate lines are black," Martha - not Heather - said. "I've never seen darker. Like a barrow-mound of brambles and thorns, turned on each other and twisted to knots that cut deep inside. You know what your father is, and you are worse than he. You have all that is dark in him, and all that despaired in your mother. You were doomed to kill without mercy, to take my vengeance for me."

Martha-in-McNamara's-body looked back at Heather Chandler. "You're supposed to be dead. Everyone believes you're dead. At least you've lost your old life, for whatever that's worth. You might not see me coming, but I'll never let you hurt anyone again. You'll pay for the blood on your hands."

She didn't seem to notice or care about the blood on her own. None of them ran after her as she walked into the night, Heather McNamara's black cheerleading dress and long golden hair disappearing into darkness.

Heather Chandler walked over to J.D., intending to kick him for lying there so uselessly. He yelled in seeming pain before she'd even raised her foot.

"Get away from me. All of you. I can feel what you're feeling, I can't stop it - anger and fear and disgust and confusion - and you - you _burn_ \- " He was frightened of Heather, as scared of her as she'd wanted him to be. His face was paper-white in the dark as he looked into her eyes. What he saw there terrified him all the more.

J.D. turned tail and ran. Heather heard the sound of the bike starting up. Leaving them behind. At a murder scene.

Well, you couldn't blame a dead girl for murder. Particularly ones she hadn't committed.

"We could tell them J.D. did it," Duke said in a small voice. "It's half true and they'd believe it. He fought Kurt and Ram before."

 _Ruthless and clever_ , Heather thought. Duke clearly wasn't playing grateful damsel-in-distress. That plan was almost as good as something Heather could come up with herself. Heather thought she needed to quash Heather Duke a lot more, and thoroughly and soon. That idea just wouldn't do.

Not that Heather actually liked J.D., of course, but the new changes that had suddenly come over him were interesting enough that she'd keep him safe from the cops for now.

"Kurt and Ram were drunk and fooling around with the gun. Kurt accidentally killed Ram, then killed himself in remorse. I'll write the suicide note," Veronica said. "Anyone got a torch?"

Heather Duke lit one of her stupid black wax candles. Veronica balanced her paper on the back of Heather's angel statue to write.

"Just don't make it sound as lame and pathetic as the suicide note you wrote for me," Heather said. "Oh, who am I kidding? Definitely make them sound lame and pathetic, as much as possible."

Duke crept up behind her and pinched her on the arm. Heather jumped.

"Just checking that you were alive," Duke said. "Flour's not a good look for you, Heather." She laughed like a mad wife in the attic in some old black-and-white film. She was losing it; Heather had worked hard in the past to find Duke's weaknesses, and she had so many of them. "Did you really fake your own death just so you could see how many people were sorry about it? That's so weak," Duke said. "Were Veronica and J.D. always in on it? Fool me once, shame on you. Shame. People will laugh at the fake suicide girl; you'll never give me orders again."

"You know the hole you vomit out of? Shut it, Heather," Heather said. "Take off your coat and give it to me. Then go sit in the corner."

Heather had figured out that some people, and some commands, were limits on her power. But she'd spent long years telling Heather Duke what to do. Heather meekly handed over her coat - new, hard to tell the color in the dark, reddish, probably - and Heather shrugged it on over her flour-coated shirt. Duke hobbled off and sat next to a gravestone without saying another word.

 _God, if only I'd_ known _I had the superpower to order people around before. I could've used it so much better_ , Heather thought.

"Veronica, clean up the candle wax," Heather said, liking this feeling of power more every moment. "Then we have to motor."

If J.D.'s disoriented ramblings were right - and Heather had the nasty suspicion they had been - then the vengeful ghost of Martha Dunnstock was inhabiting Heather McNamara's body.

And Heather Chandler wasn't about to let some vengeful ghost _win_.


	10. Arriving Home

_Who'll dig the brambles?  
_ _I, said the mole.  
_ _I'll dig the brambles in the wood.  
_ _Let him rest under the sleeping knoll  
_ _Beyond the last bell's toll._

—

Heather McNamara thought that this was kind of what she had wanted, all along. Wasn't it? She'd be more popular if people knew for sure that her powers were real. She'd pretended that ghosts possessed her and she did all sorts of weird rituals, hoping that a real ghost would come to her one day.

Now Heather was really possessed by a honest-really-truly ghost, the dead spirit of a girl who killed herself.

A fat and ugly girl who killed herself. Heather McNamara hoped people wouldn't laugh at her because of that.

God, she remembered Martha Dumptruck. Heather McNamara's mom and dad had both yelled at her after the suicide, one of the rare times they teamed up to scream at her rather than at each other. It wasn't her fault. She'd just gone along with her friend Heather. She'd never meant for it to be serious and stuff.

And now Heather was dead.

Heather McNamara had been miserable ever since. She wished she wasn't failing math. She wished she was captain of the cheerleading team. She wished her parents didn't fight all the time and weren't divorcing and stuff. Heather Duke and Veronica should have been the same as always, but she felt like both her friends hated her now and she didn't understand why. She hoped Ram would be sweet to her like he could be sometimes, but he wasn't. Veronica left her behind on the night of the funeral, in the mud with Ram and Kurt, and Heather tried so hard not to get mad at her. It was probably her own fault.

Heather just wished not to be left behind. She felt so alone all the time.

She'd never be alone again if Martha stayed inside her. She could just let Martha tell her what to do, not have to make any decisions. She rode along helplessly, a prisoner in her own body with a vengeful ghost in command.

Heather McNamara was walking through a place she didn't know, not normal Sherwood or where she was a little kid in Cincinnati, but it felt familiar nonetheless. It was a forest, like from an old movie, a wood with thick grasses and thorns and brambles like a folk story. The ground was muddy and Heather's feet sank into it. She couldn't feel her own body any more, couldn't feel anything Martha was doing. It was like she was in a dream.

Heather didn't really mind. She stepped further and further into the woods. She felt more and more tired as she went on. Everything could just pass over her and it didn't matter. Each step made her feel more and more sleepy. She walked on, falling deeper into the dream. She went on into thickets of soft brambles that moved to hold her in that place. She couldn't care whether she would wake or not. Maybe it would be better if she didn't wake up.

—

Fiery darts of impatient annoyance, grey messes of boredom, rusty-nails-twisting of worry, pressure-cookers of stress and uncontrollable wellsprings of laughter and biting anxieties and honking horns and skidding wheels -

He could still feel everyone, and he didn't like it.

J.D. had no idea where he was going on the bike. Only _get out get out get out_. He could feel every driver on the roads, every flutter as he passed a house or jogger or light in the darkness. Fifty different presences screamed inside him and he couldn't get away from them.

Since the moment he shot that prick, he'd felt it. Even felt something like Ram's last dying agony, tearing him apart as well. _Fuck._ J.D. sped on the bike, trying to get away from everyone, let him finally be alone. Kurt's sadistic rage, blind terror from Why-Is-Veronica-So-Suprised-When-She-Digests-Food Heather, shock from Veronica. Then the white-hot anger and command blazing from Chandler, burning him, forcing him to run. Martha. The murdered girl in the cheerleader's body. Fuck, she had every right to seek revenge on those who'd killed her. J.D. had seen what Chandler did to that other girl in the cafeteria, had seen Kurt and Ram go after some poor geek just because they could. They deserved to die.

The problem was that J.D. couldn't stop other people's emotions battering him with every breath he took. He couldn't hurt anyone without hurting himself. And every alien feeling forced on him seemed like pain.

His head was burning. Migraine. If he passed out he'd welcome it. There were fewer people on this road now. It almost felt like a relief. The lights of a truck flared behind him. He was steering badly enough that the driver rammed the horn and veered dangerously close to him, just to teach him a lesson. J.D. felt the guy's irritation, a hint of dark-satisfaction like he'd made someone else's day as crappy as his own and was happy in a twisted way -

J.D. rode over the bridge and turned into what felt like a more deserted piece of road. His head was slightly clearer, getting away from people, but he still felt a throbbing pain. His vision was blurring. He slowed the bike to a crawl and then even slower than that, feeling weaker and weaker. Soon he'd stop. Soon.

He barely felt it when the bike tipped off the road. He was lying on wet grass on the curb strip, more numb than in actual pain. He felt the bike wheels still spinning. He passed out.

J.D. woke to the first signs of dawn outside, pale blue light filtered through truck windows. A seatbelt held him in place. His head was mercifully quiet again, though his body ached all over. There was nothing and no one he could see out the window. Just trees running past. He knew this pickup truck. Roomy for its size, good for hauling suitcases and equipment. The radio was murmuring, soft enough that you couldn't make out individual words unless you tried. J.D. snuck a look across at his father's hands on the wheel.

Interesting. Restful. He wasn't feeling any strange emotions from his dad, not like he'd done with Chandler and the others. He tried to remember what he'd felt from Martha. The ghost. A genuinely decent person who didn't want to hurt anyone - though she had. Maybe she was the only decent person in Sherwood. The layers of misery and despair couldn't hide her fundamental kindness. He wondered if he'd ever be near her again.

 _Hell, maybe it was all temporary and over. That would be good._ He didn't believe that; never believe an optimist.

"What did you get?" his father said. J.D. sat up, wincing as he moved.

"Groceries," he said. "Don't worry, I remembered the protein shakes." He had no idea if his father had picked up the shopping bag when he'd taken him. Or even the bike. It didn't matter.

"Don't be a fool, son. You know that wasn't what I was asking," his father said. J.D. rubbed his head. His skull felt bruised, the inside of his head shaken and stirred like a hangover multiplied by a car accident then fried in the consistency of scrambled egg. He wasn't sure if even trying to talk coherently was beyond him, or whether he should try it at all. He wanted to throw up again.

"Shit. If you have to do that here, do it in a bag," his dad said.

He dry-heaved, his stomach already empty at the graveyard. J.D. supposed the cops might take him in sooner or later. Problem for later. He'd kill himself rather than go to jail.

"Hurts," he muttered, wiping a sleeve across his face. It did.

It occurred to J.D. for the first time that he should wonder exactly where his father was driving. Country road in the middle of nowhere, perhaps. The truck was going too fast to jump out.

"What power did you get?" his father spelt out for him. "It came over the police band at four-thirty. Two more dead classmates of yours, messing around in a cemetery with a gun. Your gun, I assume."

J.D. still wasn't thinking clearly. His father knew; this was very bad. Something Martha had said came back to him: _two blood sacrifices granted Chandler power._

"Doesn't look like much, or else you'd try to use it on me," his father said. "What does that undead girlfriend of yours have? Regeneration?"

J.D. thought of ragged fingernails and glass cuts. No; Chandler's power was much worse than that. She'd murdered Martha by giving a command, convinced the entire town to believe her dead on her will. It was possible to resist her, but maybe she'd master her powers even more now she knew about them. "How?" was all J.D. said. How the hell did Bud Dean know all this?

"If you're going to hide a girl in the house, clean up used makeup pads in the bathroom. Now, son, I'd not be terribly surprised if it was yours, but Occam's Razor and all that shit. Does she have a regeneration power?"

"Yes," J.D. lied.

The truck turned off the road, jolting and slowing over dirt. They were in some clearing in the middle of nowhere. The engine stopped. No sounds but faint birds and leaves rustling, no buildings or signs or feelings of nearby people.

Bud left the truck. He crossed to the other side, opened the passenger door, and dragged J.D. with him. It was a rough clearing in the middle of nowhere, a sharp downward slope off the dirt track.

"You know I killed someone," J.D. tried experimentally, "and you're not - "

"Why did you think I gave you that gun?" his father said. In half a push and half a stumble, J.D. found himself on the ground.

It wasn't the first time. He'd learnt that fighting back was useless. J.D. wasn't hurt so badly that he couldn't rise to his feet, so he did. "Should have used it on you," he said. He reached for a cigarette. The smoking typically pissed off his father.

His father snorted. "Knew you wouldn't. No guts."

"You ever seen any ghosts? Real ones, not the makeup-wearing kind," J.D. said. If his dad knew about this stuff, maybe he'd let some useful information slip.

He'd thought of it, almost since the first moment he'd felt Martha Dunnstock's emotions. If ghosts were real, if Martha was here, then maybe the dead could come back in general. _No. Martha was murdered, but Mom chose to walk into that library. She knew what she was doing. She chose to leave me behind. She'd never come back._

Maybe those jock assholes would do some haunting instead.

"Don't try to distract me with stupidity, Jason," his father said. "There are two ways this can go. You want to hear your future?"

J.D. had never given much thought to his future, not after a certain point. He was seventeen. In one of the two paths he saw, he'd be eighteen or a few days out from it. He'd come from school to find his stuff out on the lawn, thrown out, left alone to go where he would. In the other path, his father didn't kick him out.

That second one seemed like the far worse option of the two.

"Gee, I don't know about that, son, I'm not some fluffy bleeding-heart guidance counsellor who thinks the world's problems can be solved with enough tie-dye and hugging," J.D. said.

"Pity. Dad, my body's been going through some changes lately and could really use some manly guidance," Bud said.

J.D. took a drag of his cigarette. Last smoke, perhaps.

He knew that Bud Dean wouldn't trust anyone else with a power that he didn't think he could control. That meant his father had some gift of his own.

And the cost of an ability was paid in other people's blood.

"You knew what you were doing when you pulled the trigger on Mom," J.D. said. "It wasn't an accident for you. Good to have that cleared up. And here I thought you hated all that mystical shit from Grandad Dean."

J.D. didn't have many memories of his grandfather, but they weren't good ones. His mother had considered Grandad Dean a sick old man who needed help, no matter all the shit he'd flung at her, in exciting variations both literal and metaphorical - dirty Jew, filthy woman. Grandad migrated from some small town in Germany no one had ever heard of after the war and brought old occult books and toxic bullshit with him. Bud's attitude of neglect and mockery had on the whole been more sensible, J.D. thought.

His father hit him on the shoulder for that line, hard enough to make J.D. spin and fall to his knees. But he felt no anger coming from his father. Just maybe an edge of calculation, as if Bud knew exactly what he wanted and only considered this the best way to obtain it.

"Let's say I learnt there was more to it than I thought," his father said. "I haven't needed explosives to blow up a building in years."

Then J.D.'s world erupted with fire. A ring of flames burned around him but didn't touch him. The heat was real. He put out a hand then quickly withdrew it when it burnt. Real fire, not illusion or hallucination.

It didn't prove anything. Anyone could have poured petrol in a ring in advance, then thrown down a lighter or match while attention was directed elsewhere. A silly sleight-of-hand trick designed to provoke fear.

But J.D. didn't want to lie to himself.

"You could disappear," Bud Dean said. "At your age, you're not a runaway. You're not even a missing person, because there's no one to miss you. Remember that fucking oak tree in Texas."

Save the Memorial Oak Tree protest. J.D. hadn't been there, but the local news had featured it nonstop for all the remaining time they'd spent in that town. A fundraising barbecue; a gas explosion; no more oak tree - and several dead protesters. The cops had talked to his father about it, the same for all the other witnesses, seen in broad daylight, no one visibly doing anything untoward.

Now, with smoke stinging his eyes, filling the back of his throat, it turned into a real and burning threat.

"The other way this goes supposes you have an ability that's useful to me, and that you're willing to use it," his father said. "It's up to you. Can you tell me what it is, Jason?"

There wasn't a choice. J.D. had known he would give in, sooner or later, and gasping for breath made it sooner. "It doesn't work on you," he said. "I don't know much. Open to experiment, I guess. It's touchy-feely crap." He hadn't said enough. The flames grew hotter. "I think I can feel what other people feel. I could help you read people. Guess at stuff."

"You're right. That is a crap power," Bud said.

But the fire abruptly stopped. The grass was scorched in a careful, narrow ring.

"Get up, Jason. Time to go home."

A wall of fire at his back could have forced him if he didn't go. There'd be later chances to run, J.D. thought. He walked up the slope ahead of his father. Let this be over and done. He reached for the passenger door again.

Then the flames hit him from behind. This time they burnt skin. J.D. heard himself screaming, trying to put them out with bare hands. It didn't work. He felt himself flung into the back of the trunk, no longer on fire, lying next to his broken bike and a spilt egg carton.

 _Made sense_ , he thought, trying to grasp and clutch at anything but the burn in his side. _No evidence left behind._

"You've not given me enough answers," his father said. "I suggest better ones."

Questions about exactly what he'd done and felt that night. Questions about Chandler. He stuck to the lie about what she could do, but otherwise told the truth. _Doubt she's stronger than him. No idea which of them might be worse, if she got more time and practice._

"I'm guessing a hospital's out of the question?" J.D. managed. The pain came in anguishing waves, a tunnel of agony briefly narrowing to a trickle, then widening unbearably to a burning ocean once more.

"Good guessing, but I can offer sleeping pills and water," his father said. "You're almost there. Well done, son."

"Just give it to me." He'd do or agree to anything for that, right now. It came across clearly enough to his father.

Cool water, bitter medicine taste. He gulped it down, almost grateful. It didn't take a long time to pass out.

—

The girl in the cheerleader's dress knocked on the one door she wanted to visit, needed to visit. Actually, she'd already knocked on the old door she remembered, only to be told they'd moved. She'd had to knock on many different doors. She had walked a long way, her feet bruised by the roads, but it didn't matter.

Nothing else mattered.

"What - Are you okay, honey?" the woman asked her, opening the door in her old fawn dressing gown, confusion changed to concern for the young girl knocking on doors in the middle of the night. "Who are you?"

"I'm Heather," Martha Dunnstock said. "I go to Westerburg. I'm a cheerleader."

"It can't possibly be safe for you to be outside at this hour. Come in, I'll call your parents, your mom must be worried sick - " the woman said.

"Speaking of moms," Martha said. "Your daughter loved you and her dad so much. I thought you should know that."

She started to cry. So did her mother. Maybe this was all she wanted, not some dumb revenge. Maybe she'd just wanted to see her parents again.


	11. List Of People Who Never Would Be Missed

_Who'll read the book?  
_ _Who'll tell the tale?  
_ _I, said the rook,  
_ _I'll read a page from the book  
_ _Of poor Cock Robin._

—

Heather Chandler wondered what she could do, if she pushed hard enough. Since taking someone's life gave people power, she should do more of it.

Here were two ex-friends who'd betrayed her, Veronica and Heather Duke, right here in the car with her, two people Heather was used to commanding. She could say, _Heather, shut your vomit-spewing mouth and slit your wrists_. Or David, her boyfriend. She could walk up to him and say, _David, I'm dead, let's be like Romeo and Juliet, you get to drink a glass of rat poison._ Heather wished she'd tried ordering David around more when she had the chance. A Remington College man who could get you into college parties was high enough on the social food chain that Heather had been stupid enough to be thrown off-balance, to let David set the agenda. Never again.

"You won't know the address, so I'll tell you where to go," Heather said. "The house is on a block by itself. My grandma owns the land as well. Someday I'll inherit it." Grandma Chandler only had two kids, and Heather's dad was her favorite.

"Oh, the haunted mansion at the back of Sherwood, the one that's been there since the town was founded," Duke said. Heather didn't like that edged tone that had crept back into Duke's voice, lately. "I'm still waiting on a good explanation, Heather. Hey, Veronica, did you know Heather's great-grandmother was the town witch?"

Veronica adjusted the front mirror to give Duke an almost-friendly look back. "This I've got to hear," she said.

"Show some respect. Great-Grandmother Chandler was a murder victim," Heather said. She briskly retold the story to Veronica. Not everyone had a family legend as good as this one. "Two of her servants brutally killed her while she was sleeping. They said at their trial she was a witch who tortured them, forced them to work like slaves and never sleep and punish themselves by walking into freezing cold water, but there was no evidence. They fried in the electric chair, of course."

"That's always a fun one to tell over the wholesome family breakfast table," Duke said. "It's almost like a cautionary tale, except it's super hard to guess what it means, right, Heather? Heather read the story at her grandma's place, in news clippings saved up in some old scrapbook. I guess Great-Grandma wasn't so nice to Grandma, that she'd keep the murder records like that."

"Everyone's nice to my grandma, because she's an utter bitch," Heather Chandler said. Her mom and dad visited every Saturday, which she always skipped, ever since the first second she was old enough to be alone at home. "Grandma Chandler's the only person who's really been able to make me do stuff - like wear stupid bridesmaid's dresses. I think she's got power, like me. I don't know. I'm making this crap up as I go along." She sighed. Maybe she should interrogate J.D.'s father about this crap, except that she was pretty sure he'd murdered someone and gotten away with it. _Like father, like son. Thanks to my quick thinking in making Veronica forge another suicide note. Oh, the irony._

Heather couldn't resist brushing down her hair and trying to dust off the rest of the flour as they walked up the drive. She felt horribly untidy. Her grandma had that effect on her as a kid, glaring at her like she expected sticky barley sugar marks to spontaneously appear on all her furniture. She wasn't a kid any more. Heather Chandler demanded respect, whether coated in flour and drying egg or not.

There was a long path up to the door, surrounded by thick black hawthorn bushes. At the end of it, they reached a heavy old knocker shaped like a gargoyle. _I know it's supposed to be a real Civil War period knocker, but it's actually completely tacky._ They let the noise ring through what sounded like an empty house, deep and dark and echoing. Then there was nothing but silence. They waited uncomfortably in the cold for stretched-out minutes.

The door creaked open. Heather jumped, then looked at her friends to see if they'd noticed her. She hadn't heard any noises before the door opened. _You probably pulled that on purpose, you old bitch._ They gazed up at a diminutive old lady with a bent back, leaning on a thick oak stick, her face full of wrinkles and long pale yellow hair tied up in a bun. She wore a red dressing-gown over a black nightdress so thick with layers of lace and embroidery that it could have stood up on its own.

She looked at them with an absolutely unsurprised expression.

"If it isn't my least favourite granddaughter, deciding that death does not become her after all. Come in, girls. We have a lot to talk about."

There was tea and cherry cake dug up from the deep freeze. Heather Duke meekly handed out the plates. None of them were very hungry.

"You only have two granddaughters, you bitch," Heather complained.

Grandma Chandler sat in her favorite chair at the head of the table, happily waited on by others. "Yes, and Samantha remembers my birthday and followed my advice on her wedding. The poor girl might never win any beauty contests or have a conversation more interesting than my last bowel movement, but she's a decent dutiful young lady who tries her best, unlike you."

"I should've fucked her groom when I had the chance," Heather said.

Grandma Chandler gave Heather a sharp glare from half-moon glasses on a gold-fringed cord. "If I remember correctly, you tried, but like most grown men he doesn't have a taste for ill-mannered children."

 _Score one point for Grandma_ , Heather thought. "Veronica, she wasn't there, was she?" Heather asked. "Thought so. You didn't even come to my funeral, you fucking cow."

"I'm a frail old woman. You're a perfectly healthy young girl, and yet not a single phone call, visit, or even some brief insincere thank-you note for my generous Christmas and birthday presents." The teacup shook in Grandma Chandler's hand, but she seemed perfectly content to sip her drink. "I know you were a late bloomer for reading and writing, but this is excessive, Heather."

"Make the checks bigger next time, you usurious bitch."

"That's not what that word means," Veronica said in unison with Heather's grandmother.

"I like her," Duke said unexpectedly. "She's where you get it from, only she's better at it."

"Shut up, Heather," Heather said. Duke drooped again, she noted with some satisfaction.

Grandma Chandler replaced her teacup with a shaky _clink_. "Enough badinage," she commanded. Her voice was much stronger than her movements. "I've known about you since you were a baby, of course, Heather. You grew up a horribly spoilt brat, but with your ability that was almost inevitable. Tell me about this Dean boy. Is he good looking?"

"No," Heather said, at about the same time as Veronica's 'Sort of'. "Does that matter?"

"Not at all. General human interest," Grandma Chandler said. "Does he also have a power?"

"Maybe," Heather said, Veronica concurring. "He babbled something about being able to feel a ghost possessing Heather, and ran off. Coward."

Grandma Chandler looked at Heather Duke.

"No, not Heather, Heather," Heather said.

Martha Dunnstock, back from the dead. _Fuck her - I beat her once and I'll do it again._ That explained Heather McNamara's alien look, glaring like her best friend was her murderer and enemy.

"And who was this ghost? You can speak all you like, dear. Don't let my granddaughter bully you," Grandma Chandler told Duke, who dared to look gratefully at her.

"Martha Dunnstock," Duke said. "It clearly wasn't my fault. Heather made me do it. She made Martha do it, too."

"That poor girl who killed herself. I remember," Grandma Chandler said. "Dunnstock. Granddaughter of Martin Dunnstock? A good old family, long established here. I used to play bridge with Martin. I take it you were responsible for the child's death, Heather. That was most vicious and unkind behaviour, dear."

"I didn't know that she'd actually off herself just because I said so," Heather said. "That's only ever worked once, even ... " She stopped talking. She might have been able to force Kurt to do it, but she'd never know now. It occurred to her she'd best not admit to trying to kill someone else. _I'm going to have fun with this power, Grandma._

"So you and your grandmother have a mind-control power, fuck you again, Heather, Veronica's disgusting boyfriend has some sort of touchy-feely power, and Heather's not exactly herself at present," Duke said. "All that stuff I did with the cards was just the stupid ghost trying to warn us. If Martha were smarter she'd have killed you already. You don't warn people before you stab them in the back, that completely misses the point. I don't have a real power. Fuck it."

"Technically, that would be ex-boyfriend," Veronica said. "But he should be here, if only for other people's safety. Heather and I can look for him."

"No, girls. Go home and stay safe," Grandma Chandler said. Heather could tell she added an extra force to that advice, some depth of control and power. So she watched carefully, planning to use the same ability herself, only better, of course. "Heather, I'll put you in the third best guestroom, as you're family."

Heather stalked up to the stupid old room. The bed was already made up, topped with an ancient moldy green quilt sewn with pink rose petals. "You may borrow one of my nightgowns in the drawer," her grandmother said. "I hope you remember where the bathroom is, dear. You're a little too old for accidents."

"And you're old enough to start having them again," Heather retorted. "How are the Depends, Grandma?"

Her grandmother only looked sleek and much too satisfied. "Try again, dear; you almost came close to mixing cleverness with your vulgarity. By the way, where were your little friends born?"

"Veronica was born right here, I think. Heather was born overseas, she thinks she's so special to be born in eternal Rome and all that crap. Family trip to Europe, early baby, explains why she's so retarded," Heather said. "Why ... "

"You should keep an eye on your friend Veronica, then," her grandmother said. "Three things govern whether a person can gain power, although even the three together are no guarantee. First, the place of your birth must be on a nexus point. Most people avoid such places; a nexus point will be a strange small town where strange things have passed on this globe. Second, the proper bloodline must be present, a family line that gives such gifts through the generations. You can guess at the third - at the nature of the sacrifice we must make to activate our abilities."

"I was born with this." Heather raised her hands to look at them, which was rather stupid, since the backs of her hands, the familiar blue veins under lovely pink skin, looked no different to the way they'd done before she knew any of this. "Because I killed my mother?"

"Considering your tender age at the time, it's forgivable, dear," her grandmother said.

Heather bared her teeth cheerfully at her. "And what about you, Grandma - so who did you kill to get here?"

"Clearly, no one who was ever missed," Grandma Chandler said with a similar smile of her own. "It's a tedious subject that is best left alone. Sleep well, or if you can't, settle down with a nice Maria Edgeworth." Heather knew her grandmother had never owned a TV; she scowled at the indicated bookshelf, bowed with thick old grey books that smelt of mold and damp. "Don't despair. There may be a way to rescue your friend Heather's soul and lay your ghost, a way to bring back your young friend Mr. Dean safe and well. Goodnight, dear."


	12. Risen

_Who'll make the pyre?  
_ _I, said the moth,  
_ _I'll oil the gravecloth,  
_ _Then spark the fire._

—

"Take me home," was all Duke said. She refused to speak again, and Veronica didn't feel much like talking either.

The street lights flashed across Duke's pale face and trembling lips as Veronica glanced across at her in the car. It occurred to her that Duke had been absolutely terrified of Kurt and Ram, on top of everything else. Veronica had thought of the two football stars as pathetic bumbling assholes for so long that it seemed hard to fit her brain around it. Veronica had been incandescently angry about the rumor they had dared spread about her, but she'd never felt afraid of Kurt Kelly scrabbling over cow shit trying to reach her in the dark. Yet she knew the familiar risks and fears: how not to get roofied, how to duck under a guy's outstretched arm, how to clutch your keys as if you could use them to stab a man's eye out. The fears that being popular and beautiful meant attracting the people no one wanted to attract ever. And by people, she meant violent aggressive men who wouldn't take no for an answer. Fuck men. Non literally.

Now Kurt and Ram were dead. Suddenly, bloodily, and violently. _They don't publish articles on how to deal with the murders of your classmates in Cosmo. Especially if you were an accessory after the fact._

 _Yet I'm not sorry they're dead and I'm not going to pretend to be_ , Veronica thought.

Duke's house was empty, a big black lump of darkness with all the lights off. Veronica knew that since her parents' divorce, her father had decamped with her younger brother and her mom lived mostly in her office. Duke was Chandler's favorite in terms of utter lack of parental involvement at home; no one offered them paté or even bothered to show up, so her place was good for talking secrets or hosting the sort of parties that no parents could know about.

Something about Duke's look made Veronica decide she shouldn't leave her alone for a moment. Duke slammed the car door and turned the key on her front door, stalking up the stairs without a backwards glance. She barely seemed to notice she was followed. Veronica watched Duke plunder her closet and desk, laying out every last one of her packs of tarot cards and books on magic in a giant pile on her bed. She took out her green lamé cloak and used it to wrap everything in. Duke stopped at the garage to take out some engine oil, then flung her large bundle into the barbecue pit at the back of her garden.

"Give me a match," she said.

They watched the fire consume it all, delicate painted cards and flamboyant books of stage-magic tricks and melting black wax sculptured candles. The green lamé cloth sent up spitting sparks while it blackened and faded away.

"I don't have any real power," Duke repeated, flames lighting her face in the dark. "The only time I did, it was Martha. Fuck Heather. When I accused you of murder, I should've sent a congratulations card. Someone should have killed her long ago. You can even feel what her grandmother dearest did to us."

At least it seemed possible to resist Heather and people like her, Veronica thought, perhaps especially if you knew that she had power. But Heather Duke had been exposed to her for a very long time.

"Heather's grandma wasn't wrong," Veronica said. "She ordered us not to get hurt and - God. You saw more than I did of it all. That really wasn't Heather McNamara, was it? School is going to be so much fun."

It occurred to Veronica that she had glimpsed the ghost herself, before. She'd painted the lockers red with her own murder, humming a strange children's rhyme, and left Heather McNamara lost and confused when she'd stepped out of her.

"I hate her," Duke said. She faced the fire, her eyes staring at the black spaces between the dancing red and gold. "I always hated her. I hate you and Heather McNamara about equally. You knew how Heather treated me and you both gave into her. Before she picked you, at least I was the third Heather. Then Heather liked you best, so you pushed me down to the lowest and last Heather. I had to thank you for sticking your fingers down my throat. You used my back for a table. I'd have watched you go to prison and laughed. Martha was actually nice to me. Once she punched a boy at camp for me because he threw mud and yelled at me. Of course, now Martha wants me dead for betraying her, but she wasn't all bad."

"I fantasized about killing Heather," Veronica offered. "Wrote about it in my diary. But when it came down to reality, I settled for trying to make her puke. Of course, that's all water under the bridge now she's still breathing. When I joined her, I sold Betty Finn out. Betty was a true friend. She still apologizes like it was her fault I ditched her."

The girls watched the magic gear burn to the ground. For two people who hated each other, it was an oddly warm and companionable silence. They stared into the dying fire, standing close enough to feel each other's heat.

"Cigarette?" Veronica offered. She lit two and gave the other one to Duke. Duke stared at it as if it were an alien device from Mars that she'd never seen before. It took a while for her to figure out a good way to hold it. She gingerly stuck it in her mouth and breathed in.

She coughed and spluttered for a good minute, dropping the cigarette to the ground and grinding out the fire with the heel of her shoe.

"That was beyond disgusting. You're a lousy friend," Duke said.

"So are you," Veronica said.

—

J.D. couldn't resist anything. Someone carrying him, no, dragging him. Hands, not his father's, spreading cool greasy stuff on the burn. Lukewarm water forced down his throat. He saw a red ceiling, unfamiliar to him, when the blackness dragged him down again. He felt crackling fire consume him in reality and dreams alike. He wouldn't have minded it all going black, but another part of him was fighting its way back to the waking world.

The exact source of his burning headache was much too familiar. He could pinpoint it without needing to open his eyes. He let himself wake up, his attention and the direction of his body fixed on her even before he looked. She still blazed like the sun.

"Chandler. Fill me in," he said.

"I told that bitch you were faking it," Chandler said. "She sat down on the sidelines and forced me to patch you up and told me what to do. It's been two whole days. It was repulsive."

She looked healthy and free, wearing a red coat J.D. had seen on Tree-Climbing Heather at school. The room they were in was full of crocheted antimacassars on fussy chairs, knick-knacks, jewelled eggs and old photos and china kittens crammed on heavy maple shelves, all below an ornate red ceiling with egg-and-vine mouldings across the cornices. It smelt of potpourri.

"Your dad's not here. Not going to be, either," Chandler said. "On the bright side, Heather says that Heather's math teacher is happy with her improvement. Because she's possessed by some fucking spite ghost that I accidentally created, because no one told me about this power of mine to make people do as I say. Thanks a whole bunch, Grandma."

She turned to the older woman who'd entered. A small and wrinkled old lady with sharp deep-set sapphire eyes, heavy gold around her neck, leaning on a weighty cane. J.D. frowned. He felt as little from her as he'd done from his father. Not necessarily a bad thing.

"Imagine that," Chandler's grandmother said. "Not wanting to tell a particularly spoilt and bratty child that she has the power to turn people into her dolls and puppets. Surely this would cause no harm to society at large. Oh, the humanity."

 _She wasn't wrong_ , J.D. thought, part amused.

"Welcome back to the land of the conscious, Mr. Dean," the old woman said. "We have a lot to talk about. Are you able to hear it, or should I postpone until you're better able to understand?" He shook his head. "Very well." She lowered herself to one of the frilled chairs with the dignity of a Russian empress. "I assume you're a good influence on my granddaughter, as it's difficult to imagine her finding a child worse-behaved than herself."

"Shut up, Grandma," Chandler said, to no avail.

"You'll call me Miss Chandler," she told J.D. "I was never married; I assure you I was the chief scandal of both town and county." She swung the cane to point at an old photo of a very pretty woman wearing little but a few strategically placed roses. She'd looked a lot like her granddaughter, back in the day. "And of course this beautiful face I have now is what you have to look forward to, Heather. Do enjoy yourself.

"Heather inherited more than that from me," Miss Chandler said, turning serious again. "I've known of the family curse almost all my life. There are few people like us, scattered and seeded through small and obscure places across the world, but we find ways to share pieces of our lore and our ways. Your father is one of several I've corresponded with, over the years. He calls himself Burton Firestarter. When Heather told me about you, I took it upon myself to get you away from him. Like my granddaughter, I can be _very_ persuasive. I convinced him to see things my way."

"Grandma means that your power's worthless to your dad, so she bought you," Chandler said. "He sold you for about the price of a new car. I told her she should've negotiated down more."

"Fuck this. I - I can walk out of here," J.D. said. He could see his own clothes on a chair. He tried to get up. He winced as pain from the burn hit him, below the bandages crossing his side and hips. He drew the white dressing-gown he was wearing tighter around himself. He'd be able to run, if not now then later. He tried not to look too weak while he settled down again, though it was probably a lost cause. "What happens to Chandler Junior here - or Sunnyside-Up Heather?" he said.

"My granddaughter is safe with me," Miss Chandler said. "The other girl, or rather, girls, are far more complicated. You can sense the people around you?" she asked, leaning forward. "Feelings? Emotional state?"

There didn't seem much point in lying. "I guess so," J.D. said. He could feel Chandler as her usual pleasurably annoyed, grasping self, while her grandmother felt almost blank. "Your granddaughter's ... completely pissed off, but she normally is, so anyone could fake reading that from her. It doesn't seem to work on you."

He got a half-smile out of the old woman. "I'm eighty-one. It would be strange if I hadn't worked out how to control my emotions by now. I've heard of people with similar abilities to you, once or twice, and I like a modicum of mental privacy." She leant back, as if satisfied with all she'd said and heard. "Heather will heat up the soup on the stove for you," she said. "If my granddaughter's particularly awful to you, Mr. Dean, you ought to tell me. You're welcome to stay here while you recover. Keep out from underfoot, children, and don't disturb any of my visitors." She creaked as she got up, but made a dignified exit.

"I'm not sure I like the idea of trying your cooking," J.D. mused. Chandler was sulking, carrying up a steaming bowl and a glass of water on a red Tupperware tray.

"Don't worry, asshole, Grandma has people to do that for her," Chandler said. "There's her nurse, her masseur, her cook, and the mini squad of cleaners it takes to keep this place up. They come on alternate days or whatever; avoiding them all is fun like you wouldn't believe."

He'd probably have eaten the soup even if Chandler had made it. Hot enough to burn his tongue; pumpkin and leek; not that the flavor mattered as it disappeared quickly. He was very thirsty, too, and drained the glass in a moment. Movement still cost him a lot in pain.

"You said Newsmaking Heather stopped by," J.D. said. "What about Veronica?"

Chandler enjoyed him asking about that, which was a bad sign. "She's come and gone. She's developed a previously undisclosed interest in the supernatural, but she's not remotely interested in getting back together with you."

He'd liked Veronica, liked her enough to fantasize about getting her attention through more and more extreme stunts. He'd thought there might be more to their relationship than just teenage chemistry, but she'd dropped him so quickly and decisively he had to doubt that. He had to resign himself to letting go. He'd be damned if he let himself show Chandler a shred of what he felt.

"Ah, and the good old hometown boys with the fun senses of humor?" he asked.

"Kurt and Ram? Teenage tragedy, two best friends who thoughtfully taught us all how not to handle guns. They were lovely and pleasant in their lives and in their deaths they were not divided. Fetch me a bucket to puke in," Chandler said. "Hey, what about thoughts? Can you read what I'm thinking as welll?" She sounded a touch concerned about that, leaning over him.

"Oh, definitely. You're thinking it's not so good to be legally dead when you find out how many people hate you, there's a walking ghost who wants to see you literally dead, your power might well get you killed as soon as people figure out what you are, and worst of all your grandmother actually makes you do chores," J.D. said, smirking, trying to get a rise out of her. Chandler blazed with more hot anger, as if she wanted to slap him for invading her. Part of him almost felt regret at hurting her - he would feel it too. Then she used her brain.

"You're a lousy liar," Chandler said. She tossed her medium-copper-blonde curls. "Let's face it. I got the cool power, and you got the one that wouldn't be out of place on _Care Bears_."

"Remind me to tell you no more often. It'll be good for your soul. Assuming you have a soul," J.D. said.

"And to think I was going to be nice and give you painkillers," Chandler said. "Any chance of some abject boot-licking as payment?" She waited for what wouldn't happen. J.D. felt something like a reaching curiosity in her, a sort of metaphysical game of checkers or chicken. He figured he'd trade up the possibility of her grandma's prescriptions for something else.

"You offered to help me, for the right price," J.D. said. "What's the going rate to fetch a hamster?"


	13. The Smell of Smoke and Ash

_Who'll seek Robin's soul?  
_ _I, said the mink.  
_ _I'll journey betwixt cliff and vale,  
_ _I'll journey between hill and dale,  
_ _If you will hold the link._

—

The house smelt like smoke.

Heather let herself in the back via the spare key, which hadn't been moved. _He'll owe me a lot. I get to test out my powers. I get to pick up some of my own stuff. And I made him admit he's all concerned and whiny about some stupid_ pet _, which is worth knowing._

It'd seem like bats or tarantulas or gila monsters or a fish tank full of giant slimy slugs would be more J.D.'s style, but Heather had seen the hamster during her stay, on the desk in the room full of general teenage-boy grossness. David was tidier than him, Kurt Kelly worse.

She'd planned to go up to the attic first to get her own things - the most important goal here - but she couldn't stay one second more than she had to, not any more. This was closer.

Heather's dad sometimes took way too long to understand stuff and told incredibly bad jokes that should've died a merciful death with the dinosaurs. That wasn't exactly the same thing. Her grandmother had made Heather look at the burn and touch it, dark red and even black skin in spots, leathery and disgusting. _He's the kind of person who does that to his kid._

Heather picked up the hamster cage. Screw going down the stairs; there was a big window and an elm tree with thick branches nearby. Mind control was a much better power than pyroclastics or whatever you called what Mr. Dean had. She should be able to yell at someone like that and tell him exactly what to burn. _Heather Duke. David. Veronica. Martha. Or, hell, even J.D. - just to generally make the world a more beautiful place. 'Assuming you have a soul' - what kind of bullshit is that? I should've ordered him to take it and shove -_

Heather slid the window open. There was still that horrible smell of smoke and ash around her, though she couldn't see or hear traces of any fire. Heather knew she was very powerful; she was stronger than her grandmother, she had to be. She'd done something much bigger than anything Grandma had ever done, even if she still wasn't exactly sure how to do it again.

 _Subtle influence is much better than forcing people_ , Grandma tried to tell her; _let them believe they won too._ Like she'd done to J.D.'s dad, got what she wanted and let him walk away with something he wanted too. _My mother - your great-grandmother - failed to understand that. We all need to sleep sometimes, which was how she died. Good night and sweet dreams, my dear._

Heather Chandler liked blatant more than subtle, when she could get away with it. Blatant meant everybody knew you were the one with power, and subtle was what you did when blatant wouldn't work.

She set the cage out on the sill. There was no sound except for faint squeaking. But that smell of constant ash was awfully - subtle.

Then she heard a creak on the stairs.

Heather threw herself out the window, hands scraping tree bark, jumping down to the ground. She used a stick to knock down the cage and catch it, ignoring the fuss the animal made. She looked up. She saw a dark shape, rushing into the room she'd just left behind. A man was chasing her. She ran.

She looked back, just once.

Panting, Heather rounded the corner of the shopping mall, her natural habitat. One-and-a-half decent clothing stores and a corn dog stand and a grocery store. She practically bumped into store security. _Full of people. Thank goodness._

"A man's following me!" Heather blurted out, going little-girl-scared, despising herself for it and promising later revenge. "You have to help me!"

The guy seemed a little confused about the hamster. He let her in some pathetic windowless back storeroom, a dusty plain room with a chair to rest on. Brought her some water too.

"Are you okay? You want me to call your parents? I didn't see any weirdos out there - what does this man look like?"

"Black," Heather said. She didn't mean it the way the guy heard it. She was still reeling, chilled, with the man she'd actually seen. "No, I mean, Caucasian. Wearing black. A gross old guy?"

She had a vague idea what Bud Dean looked like, though she'd only seen him once and at that time hadn't cared enough to pay attention. He looked normal enough, so ordinary as to be boring.

Not like what Heather had really seen. It was shaped like a man, but smaller and spindlier. It was black all over, the black of charcoal and ash and cinders. What passed for its skin was rough and craggy, dust-edged, like it had to draw itself together with every step. Something white had flashed from its mouth like long needle-shaped teeth. It smelt of smoke and ash. Blue-grey fumes rose from where it placed its feet.

 _Did he, somehow,_ really _look like that unreal thing of ashes and dust, underneath it all? Or was it something completely different, after Heather for its own reasons?_

Couldn't give that full description - she'd sound crazy. The security guy said he'd not seen any guys who looked like that, not seen anything weird.

"Give me your wallet," Heather told the guy, trying to put force into it. She didn't let her surprise show on her face when he reached into his jacket and actually handed it over.

 _I_ do _have power._ Heather paged through a couple of dog-eared family photos - mom and dad and three girls all smiling, how apple-pie cute and generally unoriginal. _I think I once told Mom I didn't want any smelly baby brothers or sisters when she asked me; I would've been just a little kid; she made the right choice, really._ A driver's license, credit cards, old receipts turning brown, almost a hundred bucks.

She decided to only take twenty and give the rest back. No reason; she just didn't want to attract too much attention.

"Forget I was here," she told the guy, and went to find a pay phone to call Heather Duke for a ride back.

"Not a word, Heather," she said, warding off questions about the cage in her lap. Duke stayed completely silent until Heather started to feel annoyed by it. "Fine - I'll let you talk."

Duke held up her middle finger.

"Oh, come on, be nice," Heather said. "I saw a weird smoke creature at J.D.'s house - it could have been his dad, I don't know. I thought it was following me." She looked out the car mirror in case she could see it again. "But it's gone now."

"First possibility is you're going insane and having delusions," Duke said with a smirk. "Couldn't happen to a nicer girl. Second possibility is that you're being pursued by a shapeshifter - or something worse. Get smart and listen to people who know what the hell they're doing, Heather. I've been reading fantasy since _before_ I could walk."

"Give me what you've got, then. Or is this some revenge of the nerds, where I get to listen to you make the same kind of sense as Mizz Fleming trying to teach Philosophy 101?"

"All right, was it the same size as Mr. Dean? Okay, smaller. Then, probably not a shapeshifter. Ye cannae change the laws of physics, Jim," Duke quoted something or other. "Of course, we're dealing with magic and ghosts here, so the laws of physics get thrown out the window like so much loose change. But since he's pyrokinetic, I guess your new apparition is linked to him. We know ghosts can come back, so maybe someone who died in a fire he set managed to return as a smoke ghost. That's logic for you. My next theory is that your power works through pheromones. You know, like sweat hormones radiating from your body to attract mates or mark your territory."

"I don't stink. Take that back or else," Heather said.

"I did put on extra perfume today," Duke sniffed and grinned at the thick jasmine scent that filled the car in a rather nauseating way. "Maybe that'll help me - "

"Shut up, Heather."

The old line still worked.

"Sorry," Heather said, only somewhat apologetically. "I need to test what I can do. If you can beat me at my own game, I want to know." _So I can get even stronger._ "Thanks for the hot tips, Heather."

She faced a withering tongue-lashing from her grandmother, of course. Heather's only consolation was that J.D. got it equally in the neck for prompting her.

"Smoke figures indeed. I hew to your Miss Duke's first theory. I imagine you believe you're far more powerful than the old _bat_." Her grandmother gave her a frosty smile. "You killed two people; if one is enough to give you power, then two must be better. Is that what you think, Heather? I know too well what they must teach in the schools nowadays: a lot of nonsense. Of all the most vital tools in a woman's arsenal, logic is one of the most frequently absent. I suppose it's not _entirely_ your fault. But to kill again doesn't give you any more power. It's worse than that. It makes you believe you have more power, when you actually have less. A swollen head over not being caught gives you arrogance, delusional thinking, and sloppy, slack standards all over. I have seen the pattern before: people gain power, use their newfound abilities to kill again, and think themselves the most important and untouchable kings and queens of the world. It's a literal sickness within them, and it always brings them down. Do you both understand that, children?"

 _Screw you, Martha, you made that mistake too when you killed Kurt for me_ , Heather thought. "Got it, Grandma, no homicide." She rolled her eyes and kicked the side of the bed. "She means you, J.D." It must've been pretty uncomfortable for him, to know that six people knew he'd committed murder-one. She hoped he felt it.

"I mean both of you," Grandma Chandler repeated. But she was looking at J.D. "I've heard from my son that his business is ahead of schedule. Your father will leave. One problem fewer, at any rate. All you must do is recover as quickly as you can." Heather could tell her grandmother tried to add that force to it, as if her power extended to induce placebo effects or ninety-percent-of-wellness-is-in-the-head or whatever faith healing bullshit Mizz Phlegm was pushing this week. It probably _did_ , Heather thought. She had commanded herself to fake her own death, and her body had obeyed her, buried alive and surviving.

Honestly, Heather just considered herself lucky that J.D. wasn't the sort of pet owner who fussed over the hamster like he wanted to cuddle it and kiss it and have horrible half-hamster half-human babies with it, like the way Heather McNamara acted with her pathetic yellow canary Tweety. He only fed and cleaned it up in a common way, wincing but not complaining when he moved, leaning on the desk, knuckles white as he held on to keep upright.

 _If Martha isn't feeding that damn canary, I swear I'll find some way to kill her deader than dead_ , Heather thought.

—

Martha added fresh water to the canary's tray. She paced back in front of Heather McNamara's mirror, restless. _Heather? Heather McNamara? Are you there inside me?_ she thought. Nobody answered back. Martha picked up a fluorescent yellow brush and gently lifted petal-soft tangles of blonde hair out of her face. People looked at her so differently now, looked at her like she was a real person and not a joke. Her mom had been so kind to her, even not knowing - kind to a strange desperate girl who'd knocked on the door in the middle of the night and talked about her daughter, helped her wash her clothes and brush the tangles out of her hair and drink her favorite dark tea with plenty of milk, kind as if she'd known somewhere inside her she was with her daughter again.

Things with Martha's dad were different. She'd learnt about the divorce; they split two years ago. His apartment smelt like beer and heavy-duty painkillers, and he turned the stranger away without looking at her. The world wasn't right any more.

Martha had had to go back to Heather McNamara's house, of course, and try and blend in. She'd seen that Heather's parents were were totally absorbed in their own angry fights and didn't notice anything odd about Martha's behavior. When Martha was alive, she'd never thought about what the lives of her bullies were like. It surprised her that the pretty, tall, perfect, blonde Heather had something like this to deal with. And a canary that seemed to genuinely love her.

 _If I can't find Heather McNamara or feel her, then isn't it okay to be her?_ Martha thought.

She drifted through school, smiling at people and getting her homework done. Heather Duke and Veronica knew what she was and kept away, but she had other friends.

"You want to hang, Heather?" Peter Dawson asked her, his friend Dennis half a step behind. Martha remembered them as clever and clean-cut from before, Dennis rarely without a book in hand and Peter similarly obsessive about his shoe brush with a custom computer chip in it. "Wicked demolition of an old hotel, we'll be an overly safe distance outside the blast zone, our standard-issue Boy Scout birdwatching field glasses, and - " he lowered his voice. "Beer. Maybe. A little."

"Sounds very," Martha said, remembering the new slang. That and -

She could see the boys' fate lines, already tangling. They headed toward a grasping, reaching darkness that wanted to swallow them in its maw. It shouldn't have been like that.

That darkness would be Martha's fault. She held her head down shyly while Dennis and Peter made plans, agreeing to everything.

 _It's the dark boy's father. Demolitions, demolishings, destruction._

They watched the man through two sets of field glasses, swapped around between three. He set up a camera on a tripod, went through a routine.

 _It's happening. Something terrible will happen to these boys. And they haven't done anything truly wrong. Yet, I suppose._ Peter was greedy and Dennis secretly hungry for fame he wouldn't know how to deal with if he ever achieved.

Martha saw more than she had when she was alive. Her own actions had pushed the fates into a different place, a darker place. When she died, Martha went into a place that was neither life nor true death, but between them both. Most souls passed straight through that place into what lay afterward, but the murdered dead were unquiet. Martha had been born with a potential power, and it - and she - did not fade easily.

She'd learnt and seen many lessons in that world, most of them harsh ones. Martha wasn't sure if it was the nature of her death or the bitterness inside her that kept her from treading pleasant pathways, but she journeyed through the tangles of the Red Copse from north to south, fled the outskirts of Grey Willows, ran by the Hatchet Slasher's side and was tutored by the Fire Woman. It had felt like half an eternity, either that or only five breaths; time passed so differently there.

Now Martha had killed Kurt Kelly, which bound her power to her. She didn't regret it; she had seen inside Kurt's mind, known exactly what he and Ram would have done to Heather Duke, all through that long night. Her sight wasn't limited to the ordinary any more. Most of that was because she was dead, outside time and space, seeing fates and thoughts and what lay within. If she had lived and triggered her gift - although, back then, she'd never have wanted to end another's life - she would have been a healer. Reach inside people, see them for what they truly were, and cure them.

Martha studied the demolition man. She could see what lay inside him even from a great distance. He was a clever man, and a violent one. The trails of fate were a fiery red around him. In cold blood, he pushed his wife to kill herself in such a way that she died at his hand, making her his sacrifice to gain power. Since then, he had killed several times over for his own amusement and gain. Each death left a red stain on his soul. The stains were like claw marks, turning inwards on him, tearing and scratching even if he wasn't aware of that damage.

The man raised a hand. He pretended to push a button, but actually he awoke the power inside him. He burned. Black smoke erupted from the bottom of the hotel, reaching upward like a hungry, devouring maw. The man triggered another explosion halfway up the building, breaking open the floors and pillars with an inferno of fire.

The hotel crumbled into black bricks. There was terrible danger. Martha waited, her heart in her mouth.

Then action came to her. "Dennis, something terrible has happened to your mom," Martha told him, constructing an illusion for him. "Peter, you need to go with him and help. Go. I need to be here."

The car sped away. Martha walked toward the demolition man, trying to hold back her flyaway hair from the wind.

She could sense the demolition man's plan, threads of fate converging on a single decision point. _Finish the job quickly. Move out of here to the next one. Then come back, on the quiet. Drive in and burn down the old woman's house from a good distance. She dies, my son dies, and the girl lives. If she doesn't, then it proves she's not what I needed after all._

Heather Chandler's power wasn't what he thought it was. She was an evil person with an evil ability. Martha felt sorry for the other two, but Heather's grandmother had done nothing to stop her granddaughter and the dark boy was supposed to commit murder. Had committed murder. Yet he'd also reached out to Martha, tried to understand her.

The demolition man hunched over, seeming to cough. His hands clutched his chest. Martha saw him reach into his pocket. As she came closer, she saw him pour a bunch of pills into his hand. He took them all at once, gulping a long swig of Gatorade with them. Spasms and coughs wracked his frame, lines of red fire seeming to wind through him, torturing him. _Fuck it, I'm in shape and take great care of my body, I don't deserve this_ , he thought, _all I need is to find that girl, damn my son to hell ..._

Martha suddenly understood. It was his power, though he didn't know it. Each life taken by the demolition man hurt not his soul but his body. Every time he used his gift, it burnt him from the inside.

No, he didn't want Heather Chandler, Martha thought. _I think - if I were alive - he'd have wanted someone like me to heal him._

From the black ash and rubble of the hotel, something moved. Martha frowned. She couldn't sense it at all, not like normal people and animals. A flutter of old curtain, perhaps. No living creature could possibly have survived that blast. Something black seemed to move and slip through the cracks in the demolished brick, like a silverfish rushing up and down in quicksilver motion. There was something that suggested joy about the movement, like a new-winged bird flying back and forth just to see what it could do. But Martha could not properly see it, could not sense it.

Then the black form flew forward, as if it had found all the joy it wanted to in the destroyed building and needed something fresh. It came into clearer sight. It moved with a purpose - toward the demolition man.

It was almost man-size, though small and spindle-limbed. It was no man. Its body was black ashes and dust, though its eyes shone with the lambent glow of an inner fire.

Its name was Ash-and-Cinder. Martha had seen it before.

It came from the place that was not a place, the place betwixt and between life and death. She had glimpsed it only from a distance, cautioned strictly against approach by her tutor. It should not be able to walk the mortal world. She did not know how nor from whence it had come. It was drawn to the demolition man, its nature entranced by his power.

Martha emerged. She ran toward the man.

"I'm the - I'm the Heather you're looking for," Martha lied. She did not say her true name. "I'm a healer. I'll help you. You're supposed to help everyone, no matter how - how bad they are. Like the Red Cross. Let me heal you."

He looked astounded by her; Martha could tell her face was unfamiliar to him, not what he'd expected to see.

On the other side came Ash-and-Cinder. Steam rose from its footsteps. It held out a hand and spoke like the hissing of steam over hot coals, like nothing that had ever been human. "Join with me, and I will make you more than human," it offered to the demolition man. "You have power, and I cannot die."

"No," Martha pleaded. For Ash-and-Cinder to join this man meant - she did not know; she had not seen nor learnt about anything like this; but it could mean nothing good. "Choose me and tell this creature to leave." Ash-and-Cinder might respect the demolition man when it respected no other humans. "I'll heal you, I'll help you. Just come to me."

"Choose me," Ash-and-Cinder begged. "Power and fire. Let us burn as nothing has ever burnt before."

Bud Dean looked at the two of them in turn, bewildered, curious, then avaricious. He began to make his choice.


	14. Where Pale-Hearted Fear Lies

_Who'll travel the bramble road?  
_ _For something waits there, be it Robin or no.  
_ _I'll brave the thorns, said the toad.  
_ _For my kin has dwelt there long below._

—

The demolition man held out a hand to Ash-and-Cinder. The creature leapt forward. Its black hand met the human hand. Martha put her hands to her mouth, horrified and despairing. She didn't know what devastation this union might bring, but she was certain it would be horrible.

Ash-and-Cinder's hand bent and altered when it touched human flesh. The black dust it was made of turned into a ribbon, circling and binding and wrapping higher and higher over Bud Dean's arm. Ash-and-Cinder's body became an amorphous thing, pouring more and more of itself into the black ribbon. It passed over Dean's neck, over his chest and legs and feet, like the stripes of a black tiger. Smoke and flashes of fire passed through it. Red and yellow light gleamed through the black ribbon as if they showed gaps in the human flesh as well. He coughed and cried out as if he were in pain. Ash-and-Cinder settled around him like a snake. The black marks dissolved under his clothing. He lifted his chin, and a black mark around his neck looked like burnt charcoal, patterned in tiny squares. Another length of black marred his cheek like a burn. Dean opened his mouth, and fire seemed to burn inside there.

They were one. Dean stroked his throat, as if trying to tame the black mark there and force it back underneath skin. He raised his hand, and fire burst from the tips of his fingertips. Ash-and-Cinder rejoiced within him, and Dean felt his power like he had never known it before. Bound with a creature that could not die because it did not live, he would exist as long as he wanted to bring fire to the world. The human and the creature laughed together in gleeful satisfaction, and sparks shot from between their teeth.

Then they looked at Martha with eyes of burnished coal. Their harsh voice came out of a mouth black on the inside. It buzzed like a fire set between hot granite rocks.

"Run home, little girl," they said, and raised a fireball in her direction. They launched it into the air.

Martha ran.

—

Heather tossed the old nursery rhyme book at the wall. The whoosh-thump of it was pleasing. Apparently Great-Grandmother Chandler made a hobby of collecting the world's most sickening nursery rhymes, had them vanity published in gold-leaf editions, and donated a whole bunch of them to Sherwood schools.

Probably in between yelling at the servants who'd killed her.

Heather had read enough to get the point anyway: the rhyme that Veronica claimed she heard the ghost sing was different in Sherwood to the rest of the world. _Maybe Veronica lied about what she heard, just to bore me senseless with kid stuff_ , Heather thought. The hamster let out a squeak in its cage, the closest thing the universe was giving her for entertainment now.

Annoyingly, J.D. hadn't bothered to look up from his book. He and Heather Duke thought they were doing research, and liked to brag about it. Grandma Chandler's books were boring, old, stank of rotten moth corpses, made no sense, and contradicted each other on the rare occasions they were comprehensible.

At least Heather didn't have to look after J.D. any more. He preferred to do everything himself, even if she could tell he was still badly hurt. Feed his pet, stumble to the bathroom, even walk out to the garden to smoke a cigarette and let the hamster get time on the grass. He had the common sense to realise Grandma Chandler would absolutely never tolerate smoking inside her mansion. He wore his old clothes, with the burnt ragged holes in them that matched the bandages underneath. Heather had watched him, seen his ability pinpoint Heather Duke's and Veronica's moods to the second, noticed that he was surprisingly good at playing head games for someone who'd obviously never been popular in his life.

It was an interesting thing.

"I'm bored," Heather announced. She waved a hand in front of J.D.'s book - something about the possibilities of an afterlife - and lowered it out of his hands, her fingers running across his knuckles. "Have you found anything good?"

"Depends." He gave her the usual hostile glare and recited something. "How many miles is it to Babylon? As I fell asleep, I walked through the woods. I journeyed through brambles that matched my dreams. I had not seen them in life, yet knew them intimately; I knew, too, the wizened, gnarled face that stared from them."

"Ugh," Heather said, making a face. She could imagine the thorn lady looking at you through the brambles; it might have been a still from some kids' TV series or movie. "Like purgatory then?"

J.D. looked at her as if she'd actually made a meaningful point, but he lifted up the book anyway and his eyes flicked back to the words.

Heather went back to pacing and thinking. She knew J.D. was eavesdropping on her frustration. She could ask Grandma Chandler to teach her the trick to rein her emotions in and be unreadable, but that wasn't Heather's style. Go all out and be a raging inferno of sexy, scary destruction rather than some beige nothingness.

So Heather focused on the things that made her mad - _VeronicaHeatherDukeSpiteGhostMarthaDavidTHISFUCKINGGUY_ \- and shaped it into a flaming spear.

She knew she'd succeeded when J.D. was forced to look up at her.

"I can tell when you're doing that on purpose," he said.

"You're welcome," Heather said. "What you've got is more like a vulnerability than a power, isn't it? So I'm helping you get used to it."

"What you're doing is more like trying to make yourself stupider than you really are. The trouble with that is it's so often successful," J.D. drawled. "In case you're too badly-read to catch that reference, I'm saying you're _not_ a dumb blonde."

"As is, you couldn't handle a shopping mall," Heather pointed out. "You have a hard time with Grandma's cleaners downstairs - and a much harder time with _me_. What am I feeling now?" she threw out. She wasn't entirely sure herself.

"Bored. Curious," he said. "Things have always come too easily to you, and so you don't value them. But when people actually try to resist you, you hate that as well. I don't envy you, having to live with yourself."

He was wrong that Heather didn't value the things that came easily to her. She'd thought until recently she had three best friends; now she'd found out she only had one.

"I live with myself just fine," Heather said, sitting next to him on the bed. She felt a thorny prickle of anger run through her; she hated that he'd know about that. She saw J.D.'s expression change to a knowing look. _I was worshipped at Westerburg, I have a power to make people worship me, and - maybe not everything about my life is or was perfect, but I'll never admit it._ "You're just angry at the world. Angry at people like me who rule it. Nowadays you can't even fight back - when you hurt someone you feel it too," she sniped back. _Distract him, demean him, at any cost._ "Toothless and helpless, playing impotent mind games because it's all you're left with.

"We should fuck," she added.

That threw him off as much as she'd hoped. The book jerked in his hands but he picked it back up. "This seems a good time to bring out the word _no_. And the phrase _funny joke_ , right?" he snarled.

She'd meant it as something like a joke - throwing out ammunition from her arsenal to see what stuck, what wounded. But maybe it wasn't entirely a joke. She'd made the same invitation rolling around in broken glass with him, revelling in feeling _something_. And she was definitely thinking of more possibilities now.

"Veronica broke up with you; you're single." Heather reminded him of another painful fact. "I actually think it could be fun. For me, I mean. Remember that power you have?" she pointed out. She was surprised J.D. hadn't already thought of the implications - high school boys were gross. "You feel what I feel, you'll know exactly what works and doesn't. That's more than most guys get. I've had sex dozens of times - okay, not _dozens_ , but more than you - and it's never as fun as I think it could be."

He _did_ find her difficult to resist, she thought. "The blind seer Tiresias spent seven years as a man and seven years as a woman. He said women found it nine times more pleasurable," J.D. said.

"You can't use shit that never happened to prove a point. Besides, if you were that good, Veronica wouldn't have dumped you." Maybe that would tempt him to counter that point with action.

J.D. wrinkled his forehead like he was thinking, trying to get out of this by analysing it like some dusty old book or stupid school assignment. Heather moved closer to him, letting her physical closeness do the arguing. "Seems you haven't liked men," he said. "I suggest a reading course in Brownmiller, de Beauvoir, and Sappho. Granted, everything I know about tribadism comes from Penthouse letters - Dear Penthouse, I am a 36-24-35 brunette co-ed and my roommate is a gorgeous blonde who's getting a little too friendly - Really, if you like women, that's fine with me, I just feel sorry for the women." He let himself grin, a sensitive lopsided mouth, challenging her.

"I see men, I think they're hot, they disappoint me," Heather corrected. "Peter Dawson said he wanted to save his virginity for marriage, can you believe that in this century? Who does he think he is, Queen Effing Victoria? Kurt had muscles but zero personal hygiene and about the same IQ score, David's pretty, but - ugh, I'm not talking about him. You've got something that makes you a different kind of man." She placed her hand down next to his face, not touching him, reminding him that she could do so.

"I'm - flattered is far from the right word - and this is a bad idea."

"Don't _be_ flattered. Grandma made me look after you, I've already seen everything there is to see and it's not that impressive. Even the way you try to resist me isn't impressive. Heather Duke held out for years against me, and you're having trouble with days. You want a blowjob first?"

"No."

Heather shrugged. "I could just tell you to do it."

Then J.D. grabbed her, gripping both her arms tight and pulling her on top of him. Heather could tell that it hurt him. Her elbow was flush against the bandaged burn. It pleased her that he'd pain himself so much for her, giving her bruises while sacrificing himself. She could have freed herself easily, but she liked the tightening grip on the flesh of her upper arms, liked being pinioned so close and looking up at that intense glare. If he found her repulsive, it was the sort of repulsive that he absolutely couldn't look away from. She got a little more comfortable on the bed, on top of him.

"It's good to know the difference between you and Kurt and Ram is that you didn't realize that was a possibility until now," J.D. said, face taut and voice strained.

"And my boyfriend David. He's an ass too," Heather reminded him, looking up into his face, close to his chin. "You want to kill him for me? You think that would be hot?" She grinned. "Yeah. You think people like Kurt and David and me should die. You're a pretentious creep, a seventeen-year-old kid who misses his mommy. You don't have any right to decide who lives and who dies, jackass - "

He should've kissed her to shut her up. It would have been messy, hot, more like a battle than like cherry candy stuck on a Valentine's day card, sharp tearing teeth everywhere, biting and seizing dominance, anger sizzling into arousal and understanding, knowing, finally finding out exactly what the hell was going on with the other person. She'd seen some red flush in his cheeks, could feel that he wasn't completely immune to her. Men were easy, straightforward, grab them by the dick and it was plain sailing off to the wild west seas of You-Do-Whatever-I-Want -

Instead, he shoved her off the bed. Heather hit the ground. "You really didn't get the no-hitting-girls memo, did you?" she demanded. "Your mom would be so proud."

She turned her back on him. He could have attacked her from behind; he didn't. "It's all right," Heather said sweetly. "You say you want to go save Heather McNamara from the spite ghost, but really you'll try and use the journey to see your mom. You'd betray me for Martha at the first opportunity. Grandma wouldn't send you if she knew the truth, but I want you there. I told you I'd help you."

The noise had brought Grandma Chandler and her cane to the door. She opened it and raised a cool eyebrow. "Heather, are you trying to corrupt this nice boy?" she said, with heavy sarcasm. J.D. snickered in half pain and half mirth, clutching his chest over the bandages.

"It seems you're feeling better," Grandma Chandler said. "Heather, you'll find a lunch tray in the kitchen; you'll need to be well-fed and rested. The time has come to rescue your friend."

—

"Now the trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed." - C.S. Lewis, _The Magician's Nephew_.


	15. The Gate Opens

_Who'll take his soul to the world beyond?  
_ _I, said the pigeon,  
_ _The message I'll bind,  
_ _When the worlds are entwined._

—

"We interrupt this broadcast with news - " The reporter looked behind her. A wind blew through the mall setting. "An animal attack in Sherwood Mall. You see - " She paused. "We seem to have some broadcast issues - "

The wind was almost visible, it tore so hard at the walls behind her. There were no animals on the television screen. "Chuck, are you getting this?" the reporter said. "A flock of - of out of season birds - have made this a - " She screamed.

"They announce this over _A Murder Is Announced_?" Veronica's father muttered to her mother. "Goodness, I almost made a pun; pinch me while I'm still awake, dear. Will someone tell me why I watch these things?"

He looked around for his daughter. She'd already left the TV room. He shrugged, and got up to futilely hunt for his pipe.

"I'm coming to pick you up. Watch the news, Heather," Veronica said, and hung up the phone in her room. Like a spy from an action movie, her wheels screamed as she raced into Duke's driveway.

"They say _birds_ but I couldn't see any birds on the TV screen," Heather Duke said. "Shouldn't we call Heather's grandma about this? She commanded us to stay at home out of trouble like good little girls."

"We should check it out ourselves," Veronica said. Duke watched Veronica's face; saw the small, conniving smile lurking behind her words. "Besides, Heather's grandma has an unlisted phone, doesn't she?"

"Fuck if I know. I never checked."

Sherwood Mall was almost deserted except for the news vehicle and the cops. It looked devastated. Plaster and even bricks torn out of the walls, goods and groceries scattered all over the parking lot, strings of ripped toilet paper spread out and fluttering like ribbons. Two Sherwood cops were hiding behind the back of their patrol car, their guns drawn. Veronica and Duke still couldn't see any birds.

"There's a back entrance around the rabbit-food joint," Duke said. "Heather made Anna's cousin who works here tell her about it so she could shoplift for kicks."

No one was around to see or stop them as they went in. Then they heard the rustling of feathers. People screamed. _What had that reporter seen, seen something that her camera failed to transmit?_

Veronica saw the birds for the first time. There was a flock of silver birds, each about the size of a man's head. Their feathers flowed as if they were made out of liquid metal. Their eyes were a molten gold, their claws and beaks the colour of dull iron. Veronica had once earned her birdwatching badge in Girl Scouts, but she couldn't have told what species they were - and neither, she thought, could anyone else in the normal world. She saw a broken video camera on the floor.

"Through here!" Duke had already grabbed a younger boy by the shoulder and thrust him toward the exit. The flock took off, hurtling down toward her like arrows to a target. Duke looked back in fright but kept going.

Veronica screamed, trying to draw them her way. The birds wheeled back around. She flicked open her cigarette lighter. The strange birds seemed to stare at the fire. She crumpled a piece of paper into a ball, applied the flame to it, and threw it in the air.

One of the birds snatched it out of the air and swallowed the burning paper whole. It fixed its yellow eye on Veronica and swooped down. She cried out. Its claws raked through and tangled her hair. She put a hand to her head and found it wet with blood, the strands of her hair clinging to each other.

 _Not at all, not at all normal birds._

Duke came back to her. The birds didn't seem to mind entry, only egress. An old woman stumbled toward them, clutching a worn-out handbag in one hand and a torn string bag with broken tomatoes in it in the other. Her hair was a grey-black tangle and her wrinkled flesh hung loosely on her.

"Heather?" she said. Veronica saw Duke visibly cringe.

"Uh, hi, Mrs. Dunnstock - " Duke said, and took a frightened step toward the old woman anyway.

Then the birds descended, as if to stop some transgression from happening. There was no time. Veronica pushed Duke to the ground and landed on top of her, the birds' iron claws scraping over her back. Veronica glanced up; someone had rescued Mrs. Dunnstock as well. A blonde girl in a cheerleader's uniform had pushed her down. The birds kept their distance from the girl, as if they sensed something off about her.

"Martha." Duke looked up at her accusingly. "What the hell do you know about this?"

"Too much," the girl in Heather McNamara's body said. She patted Mrs. Dunnstock's shoulder and settled her under the limited shelter of a storefront. The birds seemed careful to keep their distance from her, sweeping high above her head. "If you can bring the birds to touch me, I should be able to make them go away. I hope."

"Nice try. You'll need to tell us a shitload more about these things, Martha," Duke said. She threw out Martha's name aggressively, guilt about the past mixed with the desire to fight and intimidate. Veronica had expected a need to fight - expected the ghost to cling on to Heather McNamara's body and keep trying to hurt those who'd wronged her - but instead Martha looked uncertain and willing to help.

"I think they're called the Stymphalian Birds ... " Martha said tentatively. "I don't know what that means."

"My eighth-grade boyfriend was into mythology," Veronica said. "I do." _And it wasn't exactly good._ "Watch out for their droppings; they're probably poisonous."

The girls tried not to look at an area of the shelves spattered with a horrid, virulent green liquid. It seemed to be eating away at the wood.

"They normally fly around this swamp ... only it's not a real place, it doesn't exist in this world," Martha said. "I was taught their name by the Fire Woman, but all I remember she said was they eat ambrosia ... they didn't seem very important at the time ... "

"It's not like there's an Ambrosia R Us outlet in Sherwood Mall," Veronica said. "Would they be tempted by soda pop? White wine? Honey?"

Martha frowned. "They haven't been, I think. They might be hungry but they haven't found anything, and they've been looking. What they eat needs to burn. What they call ambrosia is a sort of molten gold, served from a glowing red ladle ... "

"We can solve that," Duke cut in. "Homewares, fourth on the left. Veronica, you take care of that - I'll find the honey."

The metal birds swooped above them. The few people still trapped in the mall watched the strange scene. Most of them seemed half asleep, out of their minds with terror. Veronica, who never cooked at home, plugged a portable stove into a mall outlet and turned on the hot plate. Duke poured honey into a saucepan. The top of the stove began to glow red, and the birds turned their golden eyes to the lambent flame.

Duke looked up nervously. The birds wanted the fire; they didn't want to go near Martha. Let the honey boil. Let the fake ambrosia become more and more tempting. The birds' wings flapped with excitement. They'd swoop down and devour what was there and let their wings and feathers cut into mortal flesh with ease in their bestial excitement. Duke waited for the last possible moment. The honey boiled over.

She and Veronica dropped to the ground, and Martha took over as barbecuer-in-chief. The birds flew toward her, toward the molten honey, unable to resist the offer of food so like their familiar ambrosia. And when they came close to Martha, they vanished. She lifted her arms, drawing them in. They went away to no place on earth. It was a chilling show of power. Duke and Veronica watched, at least one of them wondering if Martha would choose to turn that power on them.

They helped the rest of the people outside. The cops counted people off and pretended they'd played a role in the rescue.

"Those pigeons ... " they heard Mrs. Dunnstock faintly mutter. "I've never seen anything like it. Thank you for saving me, dear."

"Rabid pigeons," a middle-aged businessman echoed. "Never thought I'd see those birds go that crazy." They heard others following that story, trying to talk themselves into a normal, sane world where there was no such thing as ghosts or powers.

"You're doing it. You're showing people what they want to see," Duke accused. "Just like you fooled me into thinking I had power."

Martha didn't bother replying to that one. She helped Mrs. Dunnstock walk forward and squeezed her arm. "Thank you for being kind to me," she said. "Please, take care of yourself and never stop being kind. Don't stop loving ... " Martha stopped herself. She wiped a hand across her eye and tried to get her voice under control.

"Goodbye," Martha said simply. She turned away from her mother and buried her face in her forearms. When she looked up again, she wasn't crying any more.

"You two are coming with me," she said. "There is no time. Ash-and-Cinder is loose in your world, hell bent on all sorts of destruction, and I know now that it's because of me."

Veronica's car rattled across the road at Martha's direction.

"Ash-and-Cinder is the remnants of destruction," Martha said. "I believe it was a thing born and ever existing in the place-that-is-not-a-place, grown from people's dark desires and dreams. I saw it on the dry outskirts of the Red Copse while I studied with the Fire Woman. It came to this world. It sought Dean out, after he burnt his own son and left him near death. His power creates that which Ash-and-Cinder most seeks, and the two chose to join as one. They will grow stronger with each inferno they wreak.

"Their only wish is fire and destruction, and they will not care who gets in the way. Many innocents will perish at their hands."

"And it's your fault," Duke said. Veronica looked at Martha through the mirror and saw Heather McNamara's face crumble.

"I never meant for any of this to happen," Martha said. "Do you remember anything, Heather? Do you remember how we were friends?"

"I remember what you nearly did to me that night in the cemetery," Duke said. "Heather made me do what I did to you - so probably you should have just killed her when you had the chance - I don't know." She included Veronica in her glare. "Easy on the carriage-driving, Black Beauty. I don't want to end up as road pizza."

"O ye of little faith, my dear." Veronica executed a perfect lane change on the interstate highway, slipping between four lanes with barely three feet to spare between her and two other cars. And sped up all the more. She drew a cigarette and touched it to the car lighter, smoking with one hand and steering with the other.

"Was it only Heather's power, or would you have hurt me anyway?" Martha said. Duke didn't answer. She looked as if she was thinking carefully about that question, biting her lip like Veronica sometimes saw her do in calculus class, bent over her book with a small stain of ink stealing on to her rounded cheek.

"How did you make those birds disappear?" Duke said at last. "Which is definitely much more important to know right now."

"I made them disappear because I'm the gateway. This is all my fault," Martha repeated. Her guilt wasn't helping, Veronica thought. "I came out from the place-that-is-not-a-place, the place betwixt and between life and death. I sought revenge and looked for a way to possess a living body, and now I have one foot in this world and the other in that world beyond. While I'm here, I hold the gate open. The birds came because of me. Ash-and-Cinder came because of me. He threatened me but now I know he never would have harmed me, for I am the key. I can send him back - and I will have to send myself back, for others will come through too," Martha said.

She'd said goodbye to her mother, Veronica thought. She knew that she was bidding a final farewell when she did. Veronica hadn't known Martha well when she was alive, but she was set on sacrificing herself for everyone she'd accidentally endangered as a ghost. _I would've liked to have known you,_ she thought.

"What about Heather?" Veronica said.

"She's trapped in the Betwixt-and-Between too. I think," Martha said. "I can't feel her inside me at all."

"Too bad. Where's Dean headed?" Duke asked.

"He seeks the next building he has been contracted to destroy. His human side still remembers the names and locations, but Ash-and-Cinder will insist he fires them without delay or speech or hesitation. People will die," Martha said. She pointed ahead. "We need to stop that car."

Veronica put pedal to the metal and surged ahead. It was a small zippy sports car with the construction company's logo on its sides, clearly designed to get from Point A to Point B in the fastest and most gas-guzzling way possible.

Veronica knew this route. She took the third lane, up on the bridge, then shot across the semi-legal shortcut like she was going to ram into the barrier. Heather Duke's face was white beside her. "Shit, Veronica, we're all going to die - " Heather pleaded.

Truth be told, Veronica hadn't driven the shortcut herself before, only seen her father do it. But she made the turn through the narrow spot, let the wheels screech as she revolved in a perfect U, rejoined the bottom lane from the roadside, and suddenly she was about five cars ahead of anywhere she had a right to be. She took a drag of her cigarette as if she'd been absolutely confident all along.

"Okay," Duke said. "If I ever rob a bank, you're getaway driver. Martha, climb over the seat and sit with me. You've got telekinetic powers, haven't you?"

They were barely behind Bud Deans' sports car now, but it sped up as if the entity inside knew exactly what was coming after him. Veronica hit the gas even harder.

"I've got healing powers, which you might need even more with what you're planning," Martha said. Duke frowned, not liking that.

"If you know what I'm planning, do you know if we win or not?" she said. "Is the future already set and everything we ever decide is just a round in someone else's stupid game of Snap?"

"It depends on your choices." Martha awkwardly clambered over the seats, perching in her old friend's lap. "You have a chance. Good luck, Heather."

"Veronica, your parents gave you a tank instead of a car, and I'm going to say sorry for everything cruel that Heather and Heather and me ever said about it, especially given what we're about to do to it," Duke said. She pointed ahead. "Overtake Dean now. Be the only car ahead of him. Then slam on your brakes."


	16. As If Of Hemlock I Had Drunk

_How many miles to Babylon?  
_ _Three-score miles and ten.  
_ _Can I get there by Robin's way?  
_ _Yes, but not back again._

—

They were breaking the speed limit as it was. It wasn't remotely safe. Veronica looked into her rear mirror for a glance at what she was doing. An ordinary looking man with grey hair drove the car behind them, but then she saw his eyes flash red from the unearthly creature inside him, saw the black charred markings on his neck.

That was when Veronica hit the brakes.

Screaming; shattering glass. Fire and blood on her left arm. Her cigarette dropped next to her foot. The steering wheel pressed into her and she couldn't move. The other car had gone some distance through Veronica's car, its front in her backseat. The metal was horribly twisted. There was a strong smell of petrol.

"Veronica, c'mon, please, c'mon." Duke's hands were on her shoulders, Duke's face bleeding in a set of red stripes. "Get up, we gotta get out of here, we - "

Duke dragged her out on the verge. Away from the car. Martha was near them, helping them. Then came the fire -

A brilliant, lambent fireball enveloped both vehicles. Veronica and Duke smelt and saw nothing but smoke. A black silhouette of a man walked out of the fire. Part inhuman, all but immortal, he was utterly unhurt, untouched by the crash or his own flames.

"Make him," Duke sobbed, "make him go back to the other place. Don't let him set us on fire - "

"He has to touch me," Martha said.

Ash-and-Cinder, or Bud Dean, or both, approached closer and closer. Veronica thought she saw a volcano-red smirk in the black of smoke and ash.

"Okay - " Duke gabbled. "Martha, you can do illusions. Do Hiroshima - remember how you cried at that video Mizz Morgan showed in seventh grade. Show him a bigger explosion than he'll ever get from Mr. Dean. Make him come to you - not us."

 _Good one_ , Veronica thought. Her legs were wobbly, but she stood next to Duke and Martha, her arm around Duke's shoulders. It was Duke who kept her upright. They'd stay together no matter what happened, go down together even if this was Custer's last stand.

Martha's body tensed as if she was doing something very difficult indeed. She closed her eyes and her face twisted inward. The shape of a man stopped still in his tracks as he saw something greater than any fire he had seen before.

A harsh, inhuman voice burst out of its lips. "That bitch is lying, can't you see it?"

And then: " _No_ ," thrummed an echo, the sound of ashes hissing in air. "This is what I want. This is what I need."

Martha enthralled Ash-and-Cinder, her arms spread wide and muscles knotted. She forced him to come to her with visions of the destruction of millions, of more black ash and devastation that even he could ever have imagined, memories of a bad videotape in a stuffy classroom that her imagination and empathy conjured and illused into so much more.

A black figure stepped forward, inch by inch, a figure shorter than a man with long, spindly limbs.

The mortal it had left behind screamed with an inhuman noise, as if most of its mouth were missing.

Ash-and-Cinder came closer, close enough to touch. Veronica and Duke could barely move, but Martha lured it to her. The black figure approached, reached out to touch what it thought it wanted -

And it vanished like the birds.

Martha opened her eyes. She squeezed first Duke's hand, then Veronica's. Veronica felt what she did, Martha reaching inside her to patch her up. They felt healed again. Veronica thought there ought to have been sirens around them, more screaming and summoning cops and ambulances and other drivers stopping to goggle in self-satisfied gawking, but it was as if Martha's powers kept them in a bubbled world of their own, invisible to others.

"Should I heal him as well?" Martha pointed to what was on the ground. "He has killed but he is suffering."

The thing on the ground was red, and bloody, and looked like about half a man. It was all that was left after Ash-and-Cinder departed its human host. Bereft, it crawled to the only human figures it could see, lifting a bloodied hand. Its voice howled as it pleaded for something, but none of them could tell what it was.

Duke picked up a length of metal that had rolled from the burning cars. She hissed, touching too strong a heat; she wrapped her hands in her sleeves and tried again. She held it out to Veronica.

"You should kill him," Duke said. "It'd be a mercy kill, and you'd get power. I was supposedly born in the wrong place to get power, but you were born on the same nexus point as Heather and your ex-boyfriend. Take the gift that's offered to you, Veronica. You could fight Heather if you had to, fight anything in your way. I'd do it if I were you."

 _Kill Bud Dean - after what he's done, after he chose to become a monster_ , Veronica thought. _Claim a power that might lie in my blood. It could be strength or speed or flight or just about anything. It could even be total immunity to Heather's power._ She rolled her sleeves over her hands like Duke had done, then took the length of metal. She half-raised it above the crawling half-man before them.

She let it drop again. "No," Veronica said. "I won't kill anyone. I've thought about killing people and thought some more. I'm not that sort of person."

Maybe killing Bud would have been the most merciful choice, she thought, watching him crawl. Martha, at least, looked like she approved of Veronica's words.

Duke scowled. "Even if this one doesn't work for you, there are legal ways to kill people. Join the army, be a cop, euthanasia doctor, executioner. You should take power if you can."

"But that's not my style," Veronica said.

Martha looked into the distance. "Heather is journeying to find the lost soul," she said. "We should travel to join her there."

"Excellent idea. Got any spare cars, make one out of ectoplasm?" Duke asked. "Heather's grandmother can probably help you, if we can get you there."

Martha reached out and seized both of their hands. "Let's run together," she said. "I think that will be faster."

Veronica pictured Miss Chandler's address. At first they ran through smoke, over grass; then the world seemed to fold around them. They ran through total darkness, and emerged in the garden.

—

J.D. toyed with the piece of pussywillow plant in his hand, a fragile piece of grey fluff over a black stem. Heather twisted the gold ring around her finger.

"It's only tokens and symbols added to ordinary tea," her grandmother said. "There's one-quarter of a sleeping pill; willow bark; and marjoram leaves. I left out the eye of newt and toe of frog."

"Just as long as you didn't overdo the hemlock," Heather muttered. She held her head up high. "Where are we going?"

"A place that is not a place, neither life nor death. Betwixt-and-Between," Grandma Chandler said. "You will find that it's a place you partly know already; it's shaped by desires and dreams of our waking world."

"Like a Jungian collective unconscious," J.D. said, pretentiously.

"I see you've studied well," Grandma Chandler said. "Something akin to that. What you see will be influenced by the tales you grew up with; shaped by what you expect to find. The geographies there constantly shift, and you'll be drawn to that which resembles what you already know."

"So I should expect more golems, fewer cupids?" J.D. said.

"Will this ring take me to Heather?" Heather asked. "How do I find her?"

"You may have to try asking," Grandma Chandler said. "You likely won't have the same power that you do here; you might have to use your natural charm. Now I think on it, I can see that could go terribly wrong. Just try to avoid bad language and remember your Ps and Qs, dear."

Heather thought about holding up her middle finger, but it seemed crass at such an event. "I'm ready," she said, and drank her tea in one long slug before she had the chance to think twice. _Look at me_ , she thought to J.D., _I'm a hero. I'm going to risk my life to save my friend. My only friend. My first friend._

"Are you chicken?" she teased him. He drunk too, then, as she watched.

Heather felt herself to be drowsy already. She pictured Heather McNamara's face; first as she was now, and then back when Heather's family moved to Sherwood in sixth grade, the little girl with salon-curled blonde hair and braces, the girl that Heather could finally have as a friend.

Remembering her made Heather remember the old aching wound as well. In her first day in kindergarten, the teacher pointed out especially that she and Heather Duke had the same name and gave them seats next to each other. They should have been friends. They were made to be friends. Heather offered Duke friendship in the sandpit, asking to build a castle together. But instead Duke chose Martha, rejecting Heather, daring to resist her. All the years between kindergarten and sixth grade, Heather only had people who were scared of her, not one single friend. Then Heather McNamara came to school and liked the same things as Heather and was almost as good at her at many of them, her first real friend. That was when it all came together for Heather. She would soon finally overrule Duke's willpower and bring her where she belonged.

 _Martha hurt me once before. I won't let her steal my other friend away from me_ , Heather thought.

Just before her eyes closed, Heather saw J.D.'s head droop forward as well, the empty teacup lowered back to the saucer.

Then she left her body behind, and travelled between life and death to rescue her true friend.

—

Veronica and Duke and Martha burst in on the kitchen. They saw the two unconscious teenagers slumped in their chairs, Miss Chandler paused midway with her own tea in hand.

"I suppose I'll need to put the kettle on again," she said simply.

It was mad to go on this - venture, as it were. But Veronica wasn't backing out when they had come so far, and neither was Duke. Finish what they started. And there was a goodly dollop of fear of being left behind mixed in there as well. If the others were going on a wild adventure to the Betwixt-and-Between, they wouldn't go alone.

Veronica flicked the small silver bell she held with the tip of her fingernail, hearing the pure tone ring out. She drank her tea, smiling cockily at Duke over the rim of the cup, a grin slightly shakily returned to her. She started to lose consciousness. The square of polished stone in Duke's right hand rolled across slackened fingers.

Martha had drunk her tea as well. But then she stared at Miss Chandler with a great shock at the last.

"I know you," she said. She tried to open her hand to drop the fragment of thorn-bush she held, but her hands did not work. Her eyes began to widen in a knowing fright. "I recognize you. What have you done? Why have you worked this upon me?"

Miss Chandler took a calm sip of her own tea. "Fear not, child. I have always done as you wished. Now go to where the soul belonging to your body lies."

"That isn't right," Martha stammered. "You didn't tell me. It is more right to say that I did as _you_ wished - is it not? Will you help me again? Will you ... "

Her head slumped forward on her arms. She dozed off and even snored. Miss Chandler watched her go off with half a smile, and drank the rest of her tea.


	17. A Game of Insults

Heather was in the dark, half buried in black water and mud. She dragged herself out of the swamp, disgusted. She turned the ring on her finger; the rich gold glittered in the dark. The darkness here wasn't the absence of something. This kind of darkness was the presence of something, tangible and thick and humid on her skin, weighing her down with a set of pregnant possibilities. None of them very good possibilities.

Heather touched one of the walls and found it wasn't dirt, but brick, layered with hundreds of years' worth of black slime. She was in a well, she thought. She'd have been a lot angrier about the filth and grime on her if she didn't know her real body was safe in Grandma Chandler's kitchen, and this was more or less a dream. She followed the bricks forward. Better get the hell out of here, and find her friend as soon as she could.

She tripped on something in the mire. She stooped down to see what the hard edge was. Felt like a treasure chest. Heather had always liked shiny things, particularly gold and shiny things; she was able to open the lid. She looked into a pirate's treasure. She pawed through a ruby tiara and a huge rope of pearls and an emerald brooch, bars of solid gold and glistening bracelets hung with dazzling jewels, every one of them convincingly real and solid for all they looked like something from a movie set. She'd be rich; she deserved to be. She picked up the ruby tiara and thought about putting it on.

Then she thought: _No. It's not what I came here for. It's a distraction, and probably something bad happens if I steal it_.

Heather pinched herself. She'd almost yielded to temptation already. She packed up the shiny things with a pang in her chest, and kept moving forward. It was clear the mire was filled with similar treasures, as she stepped past more treasure-chest lumps in the black grime: a world of wealth, buried in mud.

She heard a loud croaking in the dark, like a giant on a beanstalk trying to clear his throat. She stepped forward until she saw at some light glistening off the shape and finally defining it. She saw an elephant-sized shape that took up most of the well and most of the water.

It was a giant toad, dappled with green and brown. Its long pink tongue hung out of its mouth and dripped slimy moisture into the muddy water. Its throat was swollen like a nest of baby spiders waiting to pop. Its eyes were open and glaring at her, one slit of amber and the other a pale sickly green.

"Heather Chandler," the toad belched. The sound rolled moistly, bouncing low-pitched off the old brick walls of the well. Heather stiffened. She hadn't expected the creature to know her name and it felt like a violation, like a creepy stalker.

 _Maybe it's not_ my _name_ , she thought, _maybe he - it - knows my grandmother._ Heather's name was classic, a family legacy, whereas Heather McNamara's and Heather Duke's parents were just being trendy. Her grandmother and even her great-grandmother, the town witch, were Heather Chandler too.

"I founded the wealth of your family," said the toad in the well. "I am owed a fair exchange."

"Fuck you; I've never made any deals with the likes of you, toadbreath," Heather said, shifting straight into aggression. "I'm looking for my friend. Have you seen a blonde cheerleader anywhere around this crappy hole? If you haven't, you're worthless to me."

The toad burped. Or maybe _resonated_ might be a better word, or _bass-baritoned_. It was a rich full sound that would have been incredibly impressive if it wasn't completely disgusting - and if it hadn't blown Heather back up against the bricks with the concussive force of the sound. She stood on her feet and glared.

"The hell, toadface?"

"Gold in its hair; sapphire in its eyes; thirty-two white pearls in its mouth," said the toad, or gloated rather. _Guess the hair dye wears off in the netherworld_ , Heather thought aside. "I gave real gold and sapphires and pearls in trade. I think I will accept this payment. You will live in my well and entertain me."

"I should never have trusted that old bitch," Heather reflected. She looked down at her own hands, normal and slightly grubby. "I'm still alive, Mr. Toad. You can't keep me in this nightmare if I don't want it. I've got a body to come back to."

The toad's bass breath brushed over her skin like laughter. "How long do you think a body can live without a soul? Do you see a way out of this well, other than beyond me? You are here as long as I desire company."

 _Eww. Gross._ Heather folded her arms and sat in the driest corner of the well with as much dignity as she could, refusing to speak in an angry silence. _Maybe the toad's right._ She pinched herself to see if she felt anything like a twitch to return to consciousness. _I'm not backing out yet; Heather McNamara's got to be here._ She couldn't feel her own body, as if she were actually trapped here. _If the old toad's telling the truth, and that's still pretty damn doubtful, I'll die for real if I don't make it back in time._

"If it's company you want, I'll make sure you're very bored," Heather said. "I'll sit and stay quiet and you'll get nothing from me. Or else we could play a game." She tried to force power into her words; her grandmother had warned her that she probably wouldn't have the same ability, but it was still worth trying.

The toad fixed its eyes on her, inclining its head.

"I'm more stubborn than you. More stubborn than anyone," Heather said. "We'll play a game of insults. First one to make the other one cry wins. If I win, you let me out the exit behind you. If you win, you get what you want - entertainment."

Heather remembered another one of Duke's stupid geeky cartoon movie choices. A story about a short guy trapped in a cave with a nasty monster thing, where they played a game of riddles to settle the way out. If stories and rhymes were how you got past this place between life and death, she'd use whatever came to mind.

And a game of insults was more Heather Chandler's style than silly childish riddles.

The toad seemed to consider her offer. Its scales - would you call them scales? Not so much scales, as dappled bits on its repulsive, slimy skin - wrinkled a bit and its giant eyes blinked. "Let the game begin," it said.

Heather started light. "I bet there are better creeps to get kidnapped by in this messed-up world," she said. "I could've been snatched up on a black horse by a sexy highwayman with a rippling black cloak blowing in the wind. A giant slimy toad who looks like something the dog threw up after eating haggis from a garbage pail is more than a few steps down."

"You're ugly and have a shrill voice like a corncrake," the toad replied.

"Are toads invertebrate? You could've fooled me, looking at you," Heather said. "You're covered in slime; you look like a marinated bull's penis. Sometimes I tell guys they're hung like a gorilla, which only works on them if they've never been to the zoo. I guess toads are worse off. You're a jelly-boned, snivelling, dripping, drivelling, slobbering, rotten-egg-yolk stinking, mouldy, old throbbing pus-filled carbuncle. If you were a hundred times cleaner, I'd say you still weren't clean enough for me to spit on."

"You will remain here forever after your body dies. It will decay into green-tainted bones and your spirit will remain trapped with me," the toad said.

"After I win today and beat you into the ground, you'll look back on the worst thing that has ever happened to you, and think it was the best day ever," Heather said.

"You will scream and plead and beg me to allow you into the Beyond, and I will never yield," said the toad. Heather didn't want to think about that option.

"You remind me of _eau de toilette_ , which is French for, you smell like shit," she said. _It probably is._ "And you're _sans-couilles_ \- no balls." Heather's French accent was, of course, _magnifique_ , but her insult vocabulary was surprisingly lacking. She'd make Veronica write her a cheat sheet of rude French phrases once they were back in the real world, Heather thought. "Uglier than Quasimodo, Hunchback of Notre-Dame. Cowardly, spineless, as brave and strong as a puddle of puppy piss on the ground. You're a collection of bad smells looking for a sewer - oh, wait, you already live in one."

"You have a face like the Thorn Lady's buttocks," the toad said. Evidently it was starting to run low on ideas, although it grinned as if it found Heather amusing. So she kept up firing her shots.

"Your intelligence is sharp like my grandmother's Vaseline," Heather said.

"Your clothes are dirty."

"The only way you could get laid would be to crawl up a chicken's ass."

"You're too short and thin."

"Someone phone the Society for the Protection of Ugly Animals, because here's one that's about to go extinct."

"Humans are an endangered species in this world," the toad reminded her.

"If I were you I'd pay to make my species endangered - in the glorious cause of reducing the ugly population," Heather said.

"Insolent little lamb," the toad said.

"Ugly bastard."

"Vile repellent mortal." A brief lull fell in the conversation, as the toad seemed to calculate a new long speech of its own to match Heather's wit. By its big grin, it seemed amused by her. Heather strolled casually forward, pretending she'd almost enjoyed the volley as much as the toad.

"No, seriously, you're about to go extinct," she said. "You have four or five puce lumps on your right eyelid," Heather said. "They're very ugly and you've probably caught cancer so you'll die."

The toad blinked. "Which eyelid?"

"I said the right eyelid. If you can't remember a simple thing like that, I guess you have a brain like Swiss cheese, full of holes crawling with maggots," Heather said.

"Which of my three eyelids?" The toad blinked again. It was an elaborate process, but Heather pretended not to notice it.

"Everyone has one eyelid, or didn't you take Bio 101?" she said. "It was gross, I made Veronica cut up all the toads for me. She'd run a scalpel along all their vulnerable parts, castrate them, pin them open and take a look at their insides." Let it enjoy that fun mental image.

"I have three, you dimwitted human," the toad said. Heather walked up as if to see. Translucent eyelids, an upper, a lower, and a third one.

"No way," Heather said, coming closer to look. The toad blinked irritably as if to show off. She leant closer and closer, as if she were begrudgingly coming to admire the slitted amber against her will.

Then she plunged her hand into its eye. She hit as hard as she could. The toad soon shook her off. Heather bumped into the back wall again, painfully. The toad shouted out. The sound made her ears bleed.

"I won the game!" Heather shrieked. "You're crying, first one to tear up wins! I never said it had to be with the insults."

A tear dripped from the toad's mildly injured eye. It paused its attack on Heather.

"Our bargain was that I would allow you through the exit behind me," the toad said. It moved aside. The bricks behind it seemed to part at its will, leading to a deeper black beyond. "You win exactly what you asked for. Now run."

Heather ran, still in pain. She didn't turn back, not even when the toad added:

"My children are waiting for you ... "

More swamp mess lined this tunnel; it was dark and grimy, but seemed more likely to actually lead somewhere than the place she'd been trapped in before. Heather rushed through the mud and mire, panting harder than she'd ever done in gym class. Heather McNamara was the only one of her friends who actually liked to sweat. For a dream, all the jogging and dashing felt ridiculously realistic. Heather almost wished she'd done more laps for the school coach, instead of making Veronica forge sick notes.

Then she saw the first mini-toad, jumping up and leaping at her. It wasn't nearly as big as its father, only human sized. _Does Mr. Toadface have a ladyfriend - eww eww gross eww - or does it breed like when you cut one starfish in half and make two starfish?_ No time to wonder about that. Heather lashed out with a kick and the toad-child fell back in the mire. She ran on. There was another, then a second and a third of the toad-children, moving in formation, yet more hopping behind and before in the darkness, coming to surround her.

—

Heather Duke ran her fingers down the pearl edgings of her kirtle. Her new dress was about three times as big as she was. The dress was covered with a partlet in heavy blackwork embroidery, puffed at the sleeves with silver and diamonds, stiffened with whalebone, swollen with six layers of foamy white petticoats. Four thick ropes of emeralds hung around her neck to below her waist. Her hair was tied up on her head with ivory pins that dug into her scalp.

She looked like a princess. She hated it. She couldn't move, only wait at the window of the tower and look down.

The tower was narrow, round and rotting stone, a spire with a single decaying window, wide because the blocks had fallen away. Duke supposed it wasn't really timeworn, in a place like this; it was timeworn because that was what castles were supposed to be.

Below, two mediocre knights in dented grey armor rode at one another with lances raised. Eventually, one toppled the other. The victor moved to the next competition in the lists. Fallen knights in this afterworld, mostly dull ugly men with wens and pimples, facing each other in some pathetic endless battle.

Over the prize. A tournament needed a prize. A princess in a tower, who'd belong to the victor whether she wanted that or not. A powerless trinket, a token to look good and say nothing. That was all anyone had ever wanted from Heather Duke. Her parents wanted her to look good in public and get high grades. Heather Chandler wanted her because her name was Heather and because she'd once dreamt of disobeying her. One could not defy the red queen without punishment. As soon as Chandler took control of her will, Duke had become a pretty silent trophy in her wake, looking beautiful and saying nothing, _the third Heather_.

At least Martha had been a real friend when they were little kids too young to know any better, but Martha was dead and gone.

Duke once fantasized she had real power in her cards, but that was nothing.

Veronica was the one who could have real power if she wanted, but she hadn't reached to take it when she had the chance. Duke didn't get it. If Veronica had power, it'd only help her here and now. It would help her rescue Duke.

Duke was shocked at herself for thinking that, assuming Veronica would bother to come for her. But maybe it wasn't so bizarre a thought. Veronica stayed with her that night when she'd realized she had no power, stuck by her. They fought monsters from this horrible upside-down world together and Veronica was still standing, still free.

Or so Duke hoped, trapped in her tower above the sound of clashing blades.

 _Come for me, Veronica._

 _Please._

—

Veronica heard a ringing about her neck. A collar like a pet's collar; a silver bell shook on it. It was buckled securely on her. She stood on some grey cliff, wind buffeting her from every direction, a fantastical grey stonescape. Grey dust and sharp pebbles flew in the fierce wind. Tiny caves dotted the landscape as if they'd been hollowed out with machine guns.

She couldn't see Duke anywhere, despite the fact they'd come at the same time. _Retrieve Heather McNamara's soul from the netherworld. Piece of cake. Not bloody likely._

Had to find Duke, was her first thought. Then it dawned on her that she had to save herself first of all.

She heard barking around her. _No. Baying. Baying, as if of hounds_. Veronica looked down at her own hands. She was herself, but at the same time she was also a fox. The prey in some wild hunt, from some dream another person had dreamed in another world.

She could hear the hounds. She ran. Her body had a fox's speed here, quick and nimble, tireless as if she ran on four legs instead of two. She heard the dogs and even felt their hot breath on her flanks, seeking to bite and kill. She forced herself into one of the caves, squeezing through a passage too narrow for her barking pursuers to find. She dived into water, swimming, her scent lost in the underground river. Finally she forced the collar off her neck, running a stick through it. She stuffed the bell with waterweed to silence it and walked along the stream bed.

She hoped Duke wasn't going through anything nearly as bad as this. The past few days had caused Veronica to actually know her friend, know her much better than for the entire period of time she'd run with the Heathers. Duke seemed a quiet, bookish girl obsessed with vomiting - she was a girl overwhelmed by bitterness and the suppressed, screaming desire to fight, a spiral overwound until it would leap in any strange direction. _She's the way she is because Chandler's power beat her down. She fought her for years first, much longer than I fought. She's strong._ _Maybe strong enough to get out of this world together._

They defeated the birds, defeated Ash-and-Cinder. Duke claimed she was powerless but she'd stayed the course, strategic and canny, coming up with plans for them like a general. _I'll find you_ , Veronica promised her friend. A vivid memory of Duke's face the night she'd destroyed cards and cloak came to her, clenched and determined, bloodless and fierce, sparks lighting the tangles of her hair. Her bony fingers had been stiff as icicles in Veronica's hand. Duke faced the loss of her power head-on, vowing to fight back nonetheless.

Veronica wished she could say these things to Duke, wished that she could find the right words. _You're not alone. I admire you. Let's rescue each other._

The path before her widened into glowing greenery. The sort of place where a fox might hide anywhere, might find friends.

Then two more hounds reared out of the forest. Both large, much larger than any real dog, the sort of creatures that might be used to guard the river Styx from stray lyre-players. They were hunting hounds, but at the same time they had human faces. Recognizable human faces.

Murdered souls, unquiet in their graves, doomed to roam this place that was not a place.

"Who knew we'd find you so soon, Ronnie?" the dead Kurt Kelly asked, circling his prey. "Welcome to our world."

 _You hurt Duke_ , Veronica thought. _Go to hell, assuming you're not already there._

"You're that fucker's girl," Ram said. He still wore an image of the wound that killed him, the back of his skull covered in blood. Apparently J.D.'s shot hadn't injured any of the minimal grey matter Ram actually used. "Let's bite half her limbs off and rape what's left."

And, as a ghost, it also seemed what few inhibitions and social graces he'd once had were also gone.

"Ex-girlfriend," Veronica clarified, stepping back.

"You're a girl," Kurt said, and then the second chase was on.


	18. Paladin

The toad-children chased Heather through the mire. They were about the same size as a human, leaping up through the water on spindly, slimy limbs. She tried again to activate her power. _You likely won't have the same power that you do here; you might have to use your natural charm_ , her grandmother told her. Maybe Heather Chandler would beat the odds and do everything she was capable of. "Let me through," she called. "Stand down. Leave me alone. Obey me." She rushed at the toads, shouldered one aside. A slimy tendril wrapped itself around her ankle. She stomped down as hard as she could with her heeled boot and it released her. Another hopping thing moved just ahead of her. They were all going to grab her, force her down into the muddy water in a pile of toad-children. "Stop. I command you. Everyone does as I tell them to. I'm Heather Chandler. You will not win."

She felt it, that time. Something awakening in her, unfurling like a tulip rising in spring. Her power. "Bow," Heather commanded. "Don't - " One of the toad-children struck at her anyway, slimy arm wrapping around her shoulders. She dug her nails into its skin. "Get _off_ me!" Heather screamed.

Then she saw a light. Through the darkness before her rode a knight in shining armor. His horse was buttercup-yellow, and he bore a glowing white sword. His shimmering shield was blazoned with a six-pointed silver star and a red rose. He rode among the toad-children and beat them down with the flat of his blade, galloping toward Heather.

Heather jumped away from the toad, and felt her own power finally come to her. The toad backed away. But it wasn't because of any command - it was because of the fiery heat Heather suddenly felt at the tips of her fingertips. Her hands blazed with fire, fire that surged at her command.

 _If this is my power here - I can work with that._

"Stay back, toads!" she called, and fire blazed around her as she fought them off. But more came to her nonetheless, stifling her flames with their wet slime, grappling with her legs and feet.

The knight rode toward her, clearing the path. He bent and scooped Heather up on his saddle, saving her. The toads scattered as his yellow horse reared up and struck with his hooves, giving them blows as fierce as if he'd been shod with iron.

"Why?" Heather asked. In her experience, knights in shining armor didn't generally save damsels in distress without some prior scheduled repayment plan. She reached for her power again, and threw down a fireball at a pursuing toad. She sat awkwardly on the saddle-horn, bumped and jostled with every movement. The knight turned his horse to gallop for the exit once more.

"High goals attract good company," said the knight. "You have come to save your friend, and for that cause you may call on my shield and sword. But let us ride before their father seeks us out."

Instead of the British accent Heather had expected, either real or hilariously fake, the knight spoke like a modern Midwesterner despite the Renfaire speech pattern. And she wasn't a man, either.

The black tunnel walls seemed to fall away from them as they rode like hell away from the toad-children and their dreadful miry den. The knight seemed to know the way out, turning through the black maze as if she'd travelled and fought here before. At last they were in a place that felt like natural light, a conifer forest that smelt of pine and stone fossils. The knight carefully helped Heather down from the saddle. She sunk gratefully on top of an old log, wallowing in the exhausting pain after being jolted up and down for unending hours over the buttocks of a yellow horselike four-legged fiend of Satan.

"Who are you and who do you work for?" Heather said.

"I am the Paladin, and I serve the Attic Above," said the knight. "My horse is Primrose." She patted the creature's head; the yellow horse seemed to give a horsey smile, which revealed a greater number of large tombstone-like teeth than any creature ought to be allowed.

"And this Attic is ... " Heather prompted.

"The Attic Above cannot be fully understood unless you choose to go beyond, from where there's no return," said the Paladin. She dug inside one of her saddlebags and pulled out an apple, of all things, and her horse munched messily on it while she made her speech. "I choose not to go beyond while I can still do good, and you have far too much life in you to make that choice. The dwellers of the Attic Above are beings of righteousness and justice that strive to help others on their way. Their agents aid others whenever they can and uphold light and life. When I first came here, I was lonely and lost, much like you. Then I sought out the Star, and asked for a boon to grant me the power to help others. I bargained for this armor and shield and cause, and I now help mortals who wander here. I protect lost souls and dreamers. We make a difference for the better."

 _Got it, knight on a crusade, like the fairytale version of Mizz Phlegm_ , Heather thought. _More useful than Mizz Phlegm, since she did save me._ She looked up at what passed for the sky here. It was patchworked colours of light in unnatural orange and green and navy and white. Shining dots lay within it like stars. _Something called the Star apparently grants wishes here_ , Heather thought _. That might be good to know._

"I take it that means you don't want a reward for saving me," Heather said. The Paladin shook her head. Heather thought she looked amused in the tilt of her head, though with the helm covering all her face it was hard to tell. "Where is my friend?"

"I have heard from the Attic that another presence came to the Thorn Lady's domain," the Paladin said. She brought out something that looked like a map, a black sketch on parchment with messy ink and notes. A compass rose marked it in four directions and she jabbed it to point to the west. "This is the likeliest place where your friend waits - the likeliest of almost any, since she must be sleeping to be so difficult to find. This pit here is called Sleeping Bramble, a particularly treacherous portion of the Thorn Lady's grounds. The lady does not take kindly to trespassers. Of the other mortals who came with you, one may be in the hunter's cliffs of High and Over, for she smells strongly of potential power; one in the Iron Tournament, a faint signal; the last rests in the west, under Grey Willows. Which shall be the first for us to save?"

 _Crap. God knows what trials Grandma sent Duke and Veronica to. They didn't have to come, dammit_ , Heather thought. _Guess we have to rescue them too._

"I have power," Heather said. Her fire was ready within her. "Let's split up; it'll be faster." _That and I'd almost rather fuck Peter Dawson than ride that ridiculously colored horse again._ "Give me that map."

"It will be only a rough guide. Geography changes rapidly here," the Paladin said, but handed it over readily. "Are you certain you wish to go alone? You have courage, though also a stain on your soul to atone for."

 _Martha, probably_. Heather hated this Paladin daring to see so far into her. "Take off your helm. At least let me see who I'm dealing with," Heather ordered.

She dreaded seeing air, nothing, a headless horseman, a bleeding neck stump, a skull, a noseless mutilated monster with bulging flesh streaked with acid burns, a face so terrible that the Paladin hid it for a damn good reason. But the Paladin reached under her neck-piece with no consternation, releasing the hinges that joined her helm to her gorget. She lifted her helm free.

Heather saw an ordinary, pleasant-looking woman, middle aged, with plain flyaway light brown hair sticking up in wisps that clung to the helmet. Heather studied her, considering what her look meant. "You don't have to trust me," the Paladin said. "But it would be my honor to fight for your cause."

Heather jabbed her fingers on the paper. "The Sleeping Bramble is where my friend-possessed-by-a-spite-ghost ended up, isn't it? That's mine. As for you ... " She thought about Grandma Chandler giving her a gold ring to carry, and how she'd found herself in the Toad-in-the-Well's horrible mire with shining treasures in mud. She'd seen the grey plant pass through J.D.'s hands. "Go to the Grey Willows place. Save the human you find there."

Heather walked forward on her quest, alone again. She consulted the map of the shifting lands around her. She'd not learned nothing of how to navigate, taken in some of what J.D. guessed and Grandma Chandler let slip.

"I killed Cock Robin," she said, and the path below her feet buckled slightly. Rhymes and children's tales had power here. "My power of words and will alone created a mortal ill. I'll lay my ghost and redeem my friend. I'll find her if I have to walk to the world's end.

"Now show me the way before I incinerate you."

She summoned fire to her hand like she held the link, the funeral-lantern in the rhyme, and travelled the path to the Thorn Lady. To her best friend.

—

Martha went a familiar way through Betwixt-and-Between. She looked like herself again, dressed in a linen shirt, sensible trews, and good boots. This place seemed different to when she'd passed before with the Fire Woman. It was lighter and less threatening, somehow, opening on woods that seemed open and free instead of tangled and aggressive. Maybe it was she who had changed.

 _I would never have sought revenge if I'd known what it would do_ , Martha thought. Or was that just something she wanted to tell herself? She'd certainly made a mess of her vengeance. _You warned Chandler because something in you didn't want to kill_ , the dark boy had told her. She'd like that to be true. She'd like it to be more than wanting Heather Chandler to suffer first. If that was true, Martha was as bad or worse a bully as the Heathers.

 _It's brave of Heather Chandler to come here after Heather McNamara_ , Martha thought. _The two of them might be real friends._ They were walking into a danger Chandler didn't know about. Or in Heather McNamara's case, sleeping in a danger. The Thorn Lady had captured another victim in her bramble wood.

Martha bowed to an olive tree blooming with grey-eyed owls on its branches, almost absently. It allowed her to take her path onward. Into the thorn bushes to find the sleeping princess. The sleeping cheerleader. The Thorn Lady's gnarled visage seemed to glare at Martha from every aged tree, but she walked on nonetheless. The Thorn Lady's only virtue was that she held firm to her bargains and contracts, and Martha had requested no boon of her and made no oath. She was free to pass. Brambles resisted her and scratched her trews, but Martha gave them a stern look and they loosed enough for her to walk through. The Thorn Lady did not make the way easy for her, but Martha set her chin and grimly marched, muttering a rhyme the Fire Woman once gave her. It worked well enough.

Heather McNamara's spirit slept. Her eyes were closed and brambles had grown all over her body. If not for her golden tangles of hair falling through the thorns, Martha would almost have walked past her.

Martha remembered the steak knife she'd stolen from the school cafeteria that night. She imagined it in full detail, the heavy sharp steel and black plastic weight of handle, and let something like it appear in her hand on her will.

"You've made no bargain with this soul either, Thorn Lady," she said to the forest around her. No response came. "Even had you done so, I own her in prior claim, for she did me a grave wrong once. Thus I free her with or without your will, though I would much prefer with."

The brambles did not change or part around Heather McNamara. So Martha sawed through the brambles with her knife, one by one. The thorns had never cut Heather's pristine skin, but they were as harsh against Martha's fingers as they were soft on her. Martha felt pain and bled, but sawed on, pulling back stem by stem and showing the other girl's face inch by inch. She rooted out the brambles from the ground, forcing the knife deep under their roots and ripping them away whole.

Martha took her time to clear the entire lot of brambles away before she tried to touch the girl inside them. She'd not have her wake and stir and cut herself by accident. Martha put away the knife and wiped away the sweat on her face. Her hands were filthy and she cleaned them as best she could on the back of her trews. Heather McNamara looked like a fairy-tale princess, tall and slender with fair hair and smooth skin. She breathed faintly, her strawberry-pink lips slightly parted.

Martha shook her shoulder in lieu of the traditional method of waking sleeping princesses. When she was alive, she'd read the original story where the princess was woken up by one of the twins she gave birth to, which was completely messed up and wrong; that Prince deserved to go to jail. Martha didn't want anything bad to happen to McNamara, not any more.

"Mom?" McNamara muttered. "Don't want to go to school today ... " She fought against waking up from her dream, though she wasn't much of a fighter, faintly turning her head aside.

"Please," Martha said, shaking her gently again. "Heather needs you."

"Oh shit Heather - " McNamara suddenly sat up. Her eyes grew full of fear as she looked around an unfamiliar place. "What the hell is this? You're not Heather. Oh, shit - Martha the ghost - I'm sorry _I'm so sorry_!"

Martha sat back from her. She extended a hand, letting McNamara choose if she wanted to take it or not. "I forgive you," Martha said. "I'm sorry too. I've come to take you home."

McNamara brushed some of the stray mud off her skirt, looking bothered by the dirt. "Where is this, Kansas?" she said, and giggled. "My dad bought me red shoes like the movie, but Heather made me give them to her. It's not that I don't like Heather, she just ... sometimes makes you do things you don't want to do. But Heather's my _best_ friend. She doesn't really like Heather and Veronica's too different from the rest of us." McNamara sighed and drew her knees up to her chest. "Is Heather dead? I dreamed she was dead."

"Definitely alive," Martha said. _In spite of my ever so brilliant plan_ , she thought, chagrined. "I'll take you to her. We need to move fast. We're in the Thorn Lady's domain, and she can be a touch ... possessive."

Martha looked up at the rapidly darkening sky above them. Days and seasons ran at irregular intervals in the Betwixt-and-Between, compelled by the moods of the lands they travelled to. The black storm-clouded sky was definitely a bad sign, not to mention the sparks of lightning that began to flash. Then the rain began to pour.

They ran through the damp and dark. "Like Snow White," McNamara panted. "Are the trees ... alive?"

 _Yes_ , Martha thought, but wouldn't tell her at that point. They stopped in their tracks as a flash of lightning illuminated the hollow in an old tree before them. A figure appeared in the blackness.

They saw a girl in old-fashioned clothing. She wore a straight-lined dress hung all over with beads, a flapper. She had pale curly hair in a short bob and would have been pretty, if she hadn't been translucent and frightened looking. She raised a hand to them. "Please help me," she said. "My mother sold me to the trees. Please help me."

It wasn't that Martha didn't want to be kind, but she had seen too many of these tricks and traps in the Betwixt-and-Between. "Who are you?" she asked.

"I don't know. It's been so long that I've forgotten my name," the girl said. "Mother traded me for a boon. Fetch me out of this place."

McNamara reached out to her, fear mixed with trying to help, but Martha held her back. "Either she's a trick of the Thorn Lady or she's beyond our help," she said. "She must have died many years ago."

The girl ghost wept tears that mingled with the rain, but she stayed in her hollow. Martha and her friend went on.

—

It was no use running. Veronica stayed in place, lifting her hands. "Technically, I didn't even harm either of you ..." she said. Kurt and Ram weren't listening much. "That's not a good argument for you guys, is it? I suppose nothing is a good argument if you're dead and preferred to diet your grey matter in order to get a lower wrestling weight class when you were alive."

She looked at both of them, trying to show no fear on her face, making some atavistic prey-instinct stir in the back of their neanderthal brains, flickering a thought that maybe the clever Veronica Sawyer had something up her sleeve after all.

"You could just grab me, or I could make it really good for you," Veronica offered. "Strip for me."

—

"High goals attract good company" - Utena: The Movie


	19. Seven Skins

Veronica had been told she had potential power. She lied with her every breath. "You can both have me, but I want to see a striptease first," she said. "Like in a porno. I'll show you how good it can be. Then if you don't like it, you can always rip me apart later."

The hounds wagged their tails.

"Just get her now," Ram said.

"No. I want her," Kurt snapped. "I wanted her before. Heather wouldn't let me have her, but she's dead."

 _Not quite_ , Veronica thought. "Strip for me," she lied. "It'll be good. I'll make a bargain with you. For every skin you slough, I'll lose one thing."

"Kinky. I like it." Kurt's hot breath panted as if he couldn't quite control himself.

"Can we just - " Ram started, but Kurt nipped his ear. Kurt always was the stronger and slightly smarter of the two, and could force his will on Ram.

"Offer has an expiry date," Veronica taunted. She compelled as best she could, lying and forcing her version of the truth on them. "Strip off those hound skins or I'll do nothing for you."

They had to claw and bite at each other to do it. Then they stood before her, looking more human, in familiar letter jackets and jeans. Veronica the fox in turn took off her fox skin, laying it aside as easily as a glove, being human again for now.

"Clothes," she said.

Veronica put down one of her earrings. Cold chilly air blew around them, but it didn't seem to slow Kurt or Ram. She focused on their faces above a mess of pale skin and bristling hair on ugly arms and legs, spoke and lied so sweetly they couldn't help but believe her.

"You're not finished yet," she said. "Strip another layer down."

"What?" Kurt looked down at his goose pimples, at his bare hands. He got the idea and slapped Ram, gouging his skin with his fingernails. Ram helped Kurt do the same thing. In this world, far more layers could be shed, particularly if you were already dead. Veronica traded another earring.

"Go further," Veronica teased them. "You're strong, you should be able to take the pain. Go on."

She didn't much like seeing what a person looked like, trying to shed seven skins. Too much like biology class. Kurt and Ram used nails and teeth on each other, doing what they couldn't have done when alive. It started to hurt them just as Veronica lost her second shoelace.

"Strip," she repeated, and Kurt and Ram hurt so much by then they could only go on, the only way forward. Veronica simply plucked hairs out of her scalp to fulfil her half of the bargain. Seven times stripped, three long black hairs on the ground. Then there were two bleeding, wriggling lumps before Veronica, who could not have taken her even if they still wanted to.

"Riddle me this," Veronica said. She could afford to let her voice go cold, speak like herself rather than a bad Marlene-Dietrich-sex-kitten imitation. She'd told her own myth here, remade herself from prey to victor. "What does a shepherd girl do when she's alone with a despicable prince? She makes him bathe in lye first. You have chosen to do this to yourself, boys, and there's no saving you from the pain unless you choose to leave."

Veronica felt hairs on the back of her neck rise up, an eerily realistic sensation to feel in a dream world. She suspected that pain here would be borne in the waking world as well, that death here meant a true and proper death. And she felt herself standing on the gateway of that death.

She felt a void open by Kurt and Ram, like a rift in this world. A chill even colder than deep space emanated from it. The bourn of an undiscovered country, a place she couldn't look on directly or understand. A gate that would take Kurt and Ram from this waystation, to the true death that awaited them.

"Go," Veronica whispered. She wasn't sure if they could hear her or not. Whatever lay beyond that hungry void would end their pain and suffering, and they made a choice.

Veronica shivered in fear. She was alone and chilled in the woods, damp on her shoulders and wrists. She hadn't promised not to put back on what she'd lost, so she retrieved her shoelaces and found one of her earrings. She didn't bother about the strands of hair.

She left the forest behind, seeking Heather Duke as best she could, but some time after she had gone a black hand laid spindly fingers on a stray strand of hair in the woods. The creature hissed, smelling the scent that it would follow.

—

Heather swore she'd passed through the same thorn bush ten times. Twenty at least. "Fuck you, Thorn Lady," she said, though she had the sense to at least whisper it under her breath rather than blatantly yell it out. Then again, she had fire here in place of her normal powers; anyone called the Thorn Lady ought to be deathly afraid of what Heather Chandler could do.

The wind was rising. Then Heather got clocked on the head. She whipped around and glared at whoever had dared to do this, then she saw it was just an apple, blown by the wind.

It was a nice, crisp-looking apple. It was so bright yellow it was almost golden. It looked as succulent and shiny as the cover of a magazine, the sort of apple you saw once in a thousand times at school lunchtimes, and then you grabbed it before anyone else could or else just ordered the lucky person to hand it over. Then you bit, and if juice ran down your chin then for that one single fresh moment you didn't care at all about how sticky or messy you became.

Heather thought twice. _It's a trap._ She held the apple out, away from her body.

Three trees blocked her way. Myrtle to the left, pear to the right, olive in the middle. All three were in full bloom with no applicable consideration to botanical plausibility. An owl sitting on the olive branches hooted at her.

"Give me that apple," the myrtle said.

"No. It is mine," the pear argued.

"Hearken not to their squabble. I will make the best use of it," the olive tree begged. An owl hooted from it as if to punctuate. Heather stared from one talking tree to the other, her eyes narrowing. _You're only like the_ third _weirdest things I've ever seen here_ , she thought.

"Any chance any of you have a cheerleader hidden under your roots?" Heather asked. "Her name's Heather, I'm looking for her."

"Let the mortal judge who deserves the apple," said the pear tree. "Tell us! Will you judge beauty, wisdom, or riches most deserving? My myrtle colleague is for beauty; the olive wisdom; and I am prosperity and fulness, the rightful queen of them all."

"Give it to me and I'll give you a gift. Anyone you wish will desire you uncontrollably," the myrtle offered.

"We call that date rape where I come from," Heather said. "And my power already gives me that and other things." She wondered what the other trees would bribe, and if it would be any better.

"Knowledge of the stars in your world," said the olive tree. "Astronomy at your fingertips, the wisdom of the stars embedded in your mind. You will look up at the sky and know every constellation as an old friend."

"We use projectors and stuff for that," Heather said. Only an incredibly unpopular nerd would want something like that - even if it had sounded sort of cool, for about half a second. She waited impatiently for the pear to give her best shot.

"A purse of King John's jewels, lost in the Wash near eight hundred years ago," the pear tree said. Heather snickered inwardly; that sounded made up.

"Choose," the olive demanded.

Heather figured Mizz Pope and most teachers would've told her to pick the olive, wisdom. Grandma Chandler would probably opt for riches. The Heather Chandler she was at school would've chosen beauty in a heartbeat. Only shallow people didn't judge by appearance. What kind of sanctimonious, myopic, short-bus twits refused to judge someone based on how they chose to present themselves, and thought themselves better than other people for being freaking unobservant? Pissed Heather off to no end.

Should she just eat the apple herself? It was a memory of Disney Snow White that stopped Heather from that; she'd watched it with Heather McNamara as a kid and had to hold her hand in the scary bits. Maybe she should use eeny, meeny, miny, moe? Take the purse of jewels, since it was the least mind-altering of the three prizes?

But then Heather suddenly realized the great danger she was in. An icy chill pooled and ran down the back of her neck as she figured it out. These trees offered powerful bribes. _Whichever one I choose, the other two become my enemies._

She could also choose to set the apple on fire, or the trees, but that would net her three new enemies.

"I must take the time to think. You're all beautiful." Heather idly tossed the apple in the air, catching it, up and down and up and down. _When in doubt, play for time and find something to manipulate_. She narrowed her eyes, spotting dots on the far horizon. The dots in the sky grew bigger, one in particular. Heather threw higher and higher, still managing to catch it. _God, let me not drop it._ Finally the large bird flying overhead was close. She threw the apple as high as she could. The bird successfully caught such a coveted object in his beak. Heather pretended to look surprised.

"You might have to let that eagle judge," Heather said, and ran away in the opposite direction as fast as she could. She faintly heard the trees' voices as she ran.

"I think she chose wisdom," the olive tree said.

"You have only to look at her to see she's exceptionally beautiful for a mortal. I say she was on my side," the myrtle argued.

"She's rich as well, at least for now," complained the pear, very faint as Heather finally got away from them. "But will she be in future?"

Heather slammed herself against a tree trunk that didn't move or talk at her. She was pouring with sweat. " _HEATHER_!" she screamed for her friend, willing McNamara to fucking get a clue already and let herself be rescued.

A voice answered her. "Please help me," a flapper girl said. She was transparent; probably a ghost. Heather backed cautiously away. The ghost wore a long dress, making a flat silhouette with a dropped waist, dripping with beading and a panelled skirt. Heather had seen a picture of Grandma Chandler in similar clothes; she'd worn them better. Since the dress was long, it looked early-twenties rather than a later arrival in the unfortunate trend of little-boy-flat-chests with no shape, but the girl seemed the kind to be out of date. She looked like the Betty Finn type, not necessarily ugly but always wittering and fretting and betraying herself into being pathetic and unattractive, the sort who'd always be a regular five years behind the fashion.

"What the fuck do you want?" Heather said, trying to combine red-hot anger and a cold deathly chill in her words at the same time. It seemed to work on the ghost, who looked like she was going to cry if only she had tear glands.

"Cruel!" The ghost sobbed like Betty Finn, too. "You're me. You're her. You could never be anything but cruel."

 _Oh, come on, I'm sick of people giving me crap_ , Heather thought. "I'm sorry," she said, rather insincerely, taking into consideration that the ghost hadn't moved to harm her as yet. The ghost continued to sob. "Come on, stop crying - "

"Trapped forever, trapped forever," the ghost wailed.

 _Do a favor, get a favor_ , Heather decided; she had the niggling feeling the Paladin would look at her funny if she walked past. She stepped back, testing the waters. "Come with me?" she asked, extending a hand to the ghost.

The ghost girl seemed to flutter towards her, but it looked like she was pulled back by the black hollow tree that framed her.

"Are you trapped in that thing?" Heather asked, and impatiently asked again several different ways before she got a halfway coherent answer. Yes.

So Heather summoned her fire, and flung it to burn down that tree. She felt a chilly, prickling sensation down the back of her neck, as if she were watched by someone or something malevolent. But she'd decided on her course of action, and did it.

The tree burnt to a crisp. The ghost flew from it, to where Heather didn't see. Then all the other trees around her changed in a moment. On each knotted trunk, the bark changed into the face of an ancient old woman, implacably angry and twisted. She knew it was the Thorn Lady without having to be told.

"You defiled my property," the old woman said. Her grimace turned into a terrifying, greedy smile. "You're mine."

In a moment, thick walls of black thorns grew up around Heather, trapping her in a tiny space barely more than a foot square. She was on the point of breaking out her fire again, burning it all down - when she heard another's voice.

"She's _mine_ ," Heather heard. "She murdered me. That claim supersedes, and you will give her to me."

 _Oh shit spite ghost_ , Heather thought.

"She's my friend," she heard another voice, wavering and timorous. This one she knew well. Heather McNamara - the one she'd come to save. _With Martha? How could that be?_ Heather beat at the thorns with her fists, heedless of the pain.

"The Fire Woman's apprentice. How curious that _she_ dares not show her face." The Thorn Lady chuckled, harsh like the clacking of empty seed-pods against each other. "Stake your claim, trespasser. Your way out will not be easy."

"Come _on_ , Heather." Martha burst in through the walls of Heather's prison. She seized her by the hand. "You murdered me - but keep your mouth shut, don't set anything on fire, and try not to fuck anything _else_ up."

Martha Dumptruck had learnt bad language in ghostly revenge purgatory. Interesting. Martha pulled both Heathers along with her. Thorns pressed on them and cut their bodies, but something Martha did healed the cuts as soon as they were made. There was only an endless pain. Heather tried to give Heather McNamara a nod, somehow non-verbally tell her _I beat a giant toad in a game of insults and mastered fireballs and judged between three overly demanding trees and endured the Thorn Lady all to save you. I'm a freaking hero._

 _And you really are my friend_.

But all that had to wait, until they'd endured miles and miles of impassable thorns, ever stretching higher and higher above and around them, blotting out the sky.

—

He was tired. A warm grey bed surrounded him.

"You feel things," said a small grey man, "and that's what I wanted and needed. A good bargain." He rubbed grey knotted hands together and grinned jovially. He would have been short even if he'd stood up, but he was still more diminutive as he hunched over himself, his back bent and curled like the ripples in convenience store beef jerky.

J.D. felt numb; it was a welcome change from his power. Chandler was right. It was always more of a vulnerability than a power. Sensing other people overwhelmed him, anger burned him, and he felt any pain going around that the world had to offer.

He dimly felt that this grey little man was playing with J.D.'s power like a child on the beach with a shiny piece of glass, turning it over at different angles to get a different color reflection. Red anger, yellow fear, green courage, cold blue and then hot sick pain, each looked at in turn for sheer curiosity and the pleasure of different sensations. J.D. was removed from all of that now.

The grey man offered him rest. He'd sleep here and let him take what he wanted. J.D. had thought of coming to this in-between place in case of meeting - he felt emotionally indifferent to that now, so he wouldn't bother to remember. He'd settle for the grey indifference seeping into him.

Nothing seemed to matter. The grey man departed after a while, still chuckling over his new-held powers. J.D. was covered in fine grey fuzz, falling from the trees around him like a blanket. He didn't mind. It was soft. He drowsed into a bleak oblivion.

"Get up." Cold sharp hands dug into his shoulder. He opened his eyes to see something strange; a knight in silver armour. Even her fingers were cased in mail. "You must never sleep too long in Grey Willows. I am the Paladin, and I was sent to mount your rescue."

With her touch, J.D. felt a sudden pain flood into him again. His powers had been with him all along. He looked at the knight, wondering, and passed a shuddering hand over his face. He didn't want to look at her or to think. She all but forced him on her yellow horse as if he were a sack of potatoes, and she rode like the hounds of hell were after her.

J.D. could see why. The skies around Grey Willows turned blue-black. The Paladin warded creatures of the storm off with a shining blade and shield, her emblem a rose and a six-pointed star. He could feel the knight - was she a ghost? She was like a golden rose and like the smell of fresh bread, a personality concentrated into one beacon of heroism rather than split into a hundred pathetic distractions like a normal person. It was almost painful to feel how pure she was. She felt like the sort of storybook hero that J.D. had long grown out of, would cynically sneer at as silly and impossible. No one was that kind of hero. Everyone was messed up and fucked up beyond any kind of help. Himself as much as anyone.

The Paladin led him to the edge of what looked like a town, cottages glowing and twinkling with lights in the twilight. Maybe it was the equivalent of a false plaster-wall set, like something you'd see in a film, for there were no people to be seen. Her yellow horse drank greedily from a trough, the color reminding J.D. of a book he'd once read. As if quixotic crusaders existed anywhere but in dreams; and this was a dream world.

He coughed. He dipped his hands into the dirty water and wiped them across his face. The Paladin sat beside him on a mossy stone, drawing idle sketches in the dirt with a long stick; he couldn't see what, if anything, she drew. The moonlight shone on her silver visor.

"Take off your helm," J.D. said at last. His voice shook despite his best efforts.

"You mortals are all the same," the Paladin said; she only sounded vaguely amused, as if she were trying hard to be a little more cheerful. She pried off her helm to show her face: an ordinary-looking woman, middle-aged, with light brown hair and kind eyes.

She looked exactly the same as she'd always done. He couldn't have made any mistake.

"Mom," J.D. said.

The Paladin tilted her head in confusion. J.D. saw no answering flicker in her eyes, felt no sign of recognition in her. She looked at him like she would look at a not-particularly-welcome stranger.

"Who are you?" she asked.

—

"She makes him bathe in lye first" - The Lindworm (folk tale)

"Only shallow people do not judge by appearance" - Wilde

King John of England _did_ lose his crown jewels in the Wash, a swamp, in 1216.


	20. A Myriad of Problems

"You're just fucking with me." The cigarettes in J.D.'s coat had carried through to the Betwixt-and-Between. He lit one of the few he had left. His mom would've told him off for smoking and language. "You even smell like yourself." Underneath the oiled metal of her armor.

"I don't know you," the Paladin repeated gently. "I'm sorry." But she was serene and unconcerned; she held her sword on her lap, buffing it with a square stone block.

"A knight in shining armor now! It fits," J.D. said. "Your name was Deanna Rosen, and Granddad Dean fought on the wrong side in World War Two. You took care of a violent old man who called you every foul name under the sun because you thought no one deserves to die alone. I'm not like you. You did everything for other people, except when you walked into that building and left me behind. You knew exactly what you were doing. You waved from the window and he blew the place up."

"You suffer from that loss," the Paladin said, calm and neutral still as she sharpened her blade. "Anger and grief govern you."

"Of course I'm angry. You should have taken me with you," J.D. said. "If I'd known how it would be after you died, I'd have walked into that library with you in a heartbeat. It would have spared me a lot; it would have spared me - this. As soon as I saw Martha, I wondered about you. I came here to find you, and learned I mean nothing to you. But that was true all along. You didn't care enough to stay. You should have left me to sleep."

"It's dangerous to think that way," the Paladin said. "Look at your hand."

J.D. didn't want to obey her. He didn't care; he dragged at the cigarette again.

"Listen to me. The Fire Woman claims she owns you," the Paladin said sharply. "She marked you, and sold you to Grey Willows."

That idea of being owned, treated like property, angered J.D. enough to check. In the faint light of the cigarette, he could see the mark on his skin. It was a fire symbol, stamped on the back of his hand like a brand, the flames overlaid with a tuft of grey.

"Miss Chandler is the Fire Woman," he said. It felt like an unbearable heat prickled under his skin. "She said she bought me from Dad. But I was unconscious at the time; it's not like I agreed. You can't buy people." Yet in the real world many people had done and did exactly that, in both the past and the present. In a place like this, the powerful had an even wider range of options for treating those weaker than they like things.

"You must resist as you're doing now," the Paladin said. "The Fire Woman has come and gone here for a long while. She's powerful, and knows all too well how to stay within the rules of this place. She made a bargain. Grey Willows would consume all power and brightness in you and leave a desiccated shell behind."

Not like this knight in shining armor would care. She didn't even remember him. The Paladin seemed to sense his bleak mood.

"My calling is to the Attic Above," she said. "They're light, light like you have never known before. They are truth and purity and good and right. They know past, present, and future, and they act as a shining beacon.

"Let me tell you what the Attic warned me about you. You had to hide your weaknesses and they grew strange in the dark. Your despair festered as anger at the world, an anger turned outward as destruction. The Attic saw nothing but black in your fate lines, murder on a massive scale.

"Better that I should fight and kill you here than allow you to return, they said."

So this was why she had the naked sword on her lap. J.D. didn't move. If she was going to kill him, he'd let her. She had taken him from Grey Willows so his death served some greater good rather than the hunched grey creature, that was all.

"But I will not harm you," the Paladin said. "The Attic knows their untamed light is merciless. That is why they choose servants who know more of mortality, leaving judgment to those who still understand frailty and choice. I choose not to harm a child."

"Not such a child. I killed Ram Sweeney," J.D. said, daring the knight to go ahead. "You know I did it. You know I have power, and know exactly what I had to do to gain it."

"You started with a wish to defend others," the Paladin said. "It twisted into revenge. When you could have found a different way, you chose to kill. The life you took has left a stain on your soul. Try not to do the same again."

"I won't if I don't get out of here," J.D. said. "Have you told me this because you want me to kill myself? You and your Attic would be rid of a problem, and you'd have no blood on your own hands. I guess it would be as easy here as anywhere else to die."

 _That's good. Have you written a suicide note before?_ Veronica had said, talking over what had looked a hell of a lot like Chandler's dead body.

He hadn't answered her. _Yeah. Death is the logical solution for a myriad of problems._ It had crossed his mind before like an old friend.

"You might get your wish," the Paladin said, still speaking calmly and levelly. "At the end of the path, you can choose to return to your world. But you will only be able to make that choice if there is something you love enough to return to. If there is nothing you care for, you will never find your way back to your body. It will die, and your only choice then will be the void beyond this world."

J.D. bowed his head. This would be the ending, then. "Nobody loves me. You left me. My girlfriend broke up with me. Dad sold me. Anyone would be better than him, but he treated me like I'm nothing. I don't think a hamster's going to cut it as a reason to go back."

"Keep thinking," the Paladin said. "Perhaps you will change your mind. I might not remember you, but it's not as if I don't understand your feelings. I was lost and alone too when I came to this place."

"And now you're clearly _not_ ," J.D. pointed out. He wanted her to be happy - he wasn't quite selfish enough to wish her as miserable as him. He'd known all along his mother would have been better off if he had never existed, if she never met his father. It hurt that she had utterly forgotten him, that she looked on him as no more than an unpleasant stranger.

The Paladin nodded. "I changed. I used to look out into the world I left behind, watching its sea of troubles while I was helpless to aid anyone. I suppose I was trapped like that for years, watching only to torment myself that there was nothing I could do. Then I journeyed to find the Star and ask for a boon to relieve my endless misery. I asked for this. I sought the ability to help instead of watching and weeping; I asked to give myself to a noble cause. Now I help lost souls in this place and visit mortal dreams to fight nightmares.

"But to ask a favor in this world, you must give something of value in return. I traded my memories of my life before. If I really am your mother, then my memory of you must have been very important to me, once."

There was something like compassion in her eyes as she looked at him, but it was only the pity you would give a stranger. J.D. dropped his glance, staring at the brand on the back of his hand once more.

The Paladin raised her gaze to the horizon and then stood up. She sheathed her sword. Her horse reared expectantly. "The Thorn Lady rises," she said. "I ride to her to help your friends. You can choose to come or stay."

—

Heather Duke suddenly went blind. Two hands went over her face.

"Guess who?"

She whipped around, hoping against hope - surely she knew the voice, surely she wasn't wrong. "Veronica?"

 _She came. She promised she'd come for me_ , Heather thought. She tried valiantly to hide her surprise and relief, hide how desperate she'd felt. "How did you get up here?" she demanded. "There's no way out or in ... "

"When you've been lent a fox skin, it's easy to find secret passages," Veronica said. She gave Duke a feral, conspiratorial grin. Veronica's clothes were dirty and her hair wild, and she looked like she'd passed through much worse trouble than she was going to admit to, but she was powerful and unbroken and took the lead. "Let's get you out of those clothes."

Heather flushed. "Of course," she said haughtily. "I can't move in them, after all."

They looked down at the tournament, Veronica all but hidden behind Duke's dress. "They're fighting over you," Veronica said.

"It's not flattering. I'm just a toy," Duke said. "A prize. It's a Remington party writ large. Not my style."

The tournament proceeded apace outside the tower. Veronica glanced contemptuously at the dirty men trying to bash each other over the head in various uncreative ways. Then she focused all her attention on Duke.

She unfastened the dress, her fingers precise and dextrous, sweeping over grommets and buckles and buttons and fine lacings. The outer shell first, peeling apart the embroidery hard as armor, the tips of her fingers like ghosts on the edge of Duke's awareness, barely there at all. Then Veronica's breath was warm and human on the back of Duke's neck as she came closer. She released the cruel pins through Duke's hair, letting it fall freely across her face and shoulders. Next was the corset, Veronica leaning in close to unlace it from her front. The leather knots were tied viciously tight. Duke could begin to breathe again, though her breath was still shallow and quick and heaving, damp in small, swollen puffs in her lungs.

Veronica knelt in front of her to finish unlacing the corset. For a moment she reached out to the side. Her cool fingers brushed the inside of Duke's wrist, the vulnerable slow-beating pulse, as if she wanted to reassure her. The touch seemed enough of an exchange, permission given so quickly and surely. Veronica went deeper without needing to ask. Her hands gently parted the petticoats, plucked away the linen undershifts, unseamed the whalebone rods. She seemed to do it all as easily as touching a ripe apple and feeling it come into your hand.

Under it all, Duke was in a green turtleneck and jeans, like any boring ordinary human girl. At least these clothes were easy to move in.

"They're going to catch us," Duke said.

"No." Veronica touched a grubby finger to Duke's lips, silencing her, a glint of gleeful mischief in her eyes. "You were right. I have a power. I don't know what it was supposed to be in the real world, but here I can make people believe what I want them to believe."

Veronica reached for an old broom in the corner of the target. She put the elaborate clothes around it, dressing up a scarecrow figure with a stick for a face and a hank of straw for hair, elaborate dress and jewels forced around it to make _it_ the princess they wanted.

She dragged the doll with her to the window. The greedy eyes of the men in the tournament fell on Veronica, but she was unafraid.

"Here is your prize!" Veronica called with a piercing voice, and regally flung the straw doll from the window. The winds caught the dress fabric, making it flap like a kite. It blew and scurried above the men's heads. They chased it, tripping over each other, punching out, hands ripping and soiling the dress to pieces. It didn't even matter to them that the doll was a hank of straw instead of a person. Veronica pulled Duke away quickly.

They exited the filthy, cobweb-strewn tunnel somewhere in a brown clearing. Duke looked at her wrist, around where Veronica had clasped her, as if she might find it bruised or seared with a burn.

Veronica groaned. "Who makes the geometry of this place, the Mad Hatter? I started in the north, I think, and met you in the south. Is Heather in the east or west? I guess the wicked witch is supposed to come from one of those places ... West ... East ... West ... "

Veronica set a course to a goat track by their left. The thick grass walls around it made it look like the beginning of a corn maze.

"Off with her head," Duke joked, but it seemed like Veronica didn't hear her clever reference. Veronica stepped boldly forward, and Duke had no choice but to follow in her wake or be left behind.

The grass whispered to Duke.

 _You're powerless_ , it seemed to chant, whisper, susurrate over and over in the soft blowing of winds.

She listened.


	21. Convocation of Cardinals

"Veronica!" Heather Duke called. Her friend didn't turn back. _Left behind again_ , something in the corn sheaves whispered to her. She blinked. Veronica's shadow hung behind her, splitting into three. She couldn't tell which one to follow. She hurried forward. Other shadows crept up beside her, layered over the tall grasses. At first they moved with her and then moved of their own will.

 _You're powerless_ , they hissed at her.

A shadow play. Duke's eye was caught by a shade of Veronica, proud and clever and scornful and glamorous.

 _You want what you can never have_ , Veronica's shade said, dangerous lips blood red and hair waving like a siren underwater, flawless and even more beautiful than she'd been in life.

Duke was drawn into memory.

At camp. She'd followed Martha there, a Catholic girl at a Jewish camp - she'd been weak even then, the older Heather Duke thought. At the party night, a celebration just before going home, it felt as if everyone was talking about that girl - an older girl, tall and powerful and from the perspective of eleven on the cusp of being a grown-up - the beautiful girl, with smooth dark hair and a sun-brown tan, who wore a small tight white peasant blouse to the party.

 _You can see everything when she bends down. Is she even wearing a bra?_ someone whisper-talked, loud enough for Duke and everyone around to hear. She watched the girl, covertly, along with the others. Would she bend down? She talked to her friends and moved between the tables. Then it happened. She dropped a napkin and stooped for it. Her rounded breasts moved and you could see almost all of them, bobbing and almost falling out -

"You shouldn't stare." Martha was frowning at her. "That's rude."

Duke angrily denied it; she and Martha moved on.

Freshman year came. Duke had a lot of headaches then. It felt like Heather Chandler wouldn't leave the inside of her head alone, just as she wouldn't leave the outside of her head alone. Taunting, focused on her, like a bird of prey going in on a helpless mouse for the kill. It didn't help that Heather Chandler was beautiful. Golden and dazzling, curls floating around her head like the viperous coils of a medusa. Slender and taunting Duke, _You'll end up as fat as Martha Dumptruck, I could reach out and pinch the rolls on your waist, we'll give you a makeover if you're good._ What Duke never told was the grasping, reaching, secret hot wetness she felt, everything wrong, everything no one was supposed to feel about another girl. It was against Jesus. She turned on Martha on Heather Chandler's say-so - God, it made her sick to think about it now - orchestrated a prank where she dumped melted ice cream on Martha's head, fed Martha's papier-mache project to the toilet, told Martha point blank that she hated her and she was a fat loser -

 _It was you all along_ , Duke's shadow whispered to her. _You're the powerless one. Heather and Martha and Veronica are all better than you. You're the toy they all whim between them in their games._

 _There is a boy and there will always be a boy; Veronica will never think of you. She knows you want her - how could someone so brilliant and clever not know that - and she will take your store of affection only to spend it on the next boy._

Something stabbed Duke in the leg. She looked down, her head whirling. Her hand fixed around a thorny plant. It hurt, but at least the pain gave her clarity. The illusions around her cleared away. At least she could take a deep breath.

"Take it, gratis," said an unfamiliar woman's voice. Duke jumped and leapt back, still clutching the cluster of thorns. It looked almost like a bracelet, a twisted circle.

"I deliver my exposition: I am the Thorn Lady, a being of this land," the woman's voice said. She spoke from nowhere, as if she at least admitted she was a delusion. "You have met some lost souls on their way to death here, but I am not one of them. I was never mortal. I am the sum of men's fears, an archetype from misogynistic nightmares. I grew my thorns because of hatred, and protect myself through my power. A world without men would be not so terrible - would it, child?" she asked, almost mockingly, as if she knew Duke's secret and cared to exploit it.

"What do you want? Everyone wants something," Duke spat out. "You just want to use me too."

"I offer you reality," said the Thorn Lady. "Pain is truth. What hurts is real. You learnt this lesson long ago."

Duke drew herself up. This voice spoke her language. "Don't believe pretty lies," she said. "People hurt you and will always hurt you. Your only choice is to take power when you can."

"Well reasoned. You think yourself powerless, but I tell you that power is in your mind," the Thorn Lady said. "I will not lie to you. My thorns are a gift and no obligation, because you are as clever and sharp as me. I offer boons. When the time comes for you to bargain, consider me. Farewell."

The sheaves and shadows around Duke flickered again, as if the maze tried to drive her back into vulnerability. She touched one of the thorns until her finger started to bleed. The illusions and images vanished at the touch of pain, and she could see Veronica walking ahead of her.

Veronica turned back. "Heather?"

Before Veronica would see any of it, Duke slipped the thorn bracelet on her hand, below her long sleeve. Veronica already had power; she didn't need to know about someone else's offer of even more power. Duke hurried to catch up to her.

"One hell of a corn maze," Veronica said.

"It's not so bad once you're used to it," Duke said.

—

Heather struggled through the black-biting thorns. Martha Dunnstock pulled her wrist painfully, forcing her along. Easy for a spiteful ghost to ignore pain, especially other people's. They had to dash at the least give of weakness in the black branches, most of them utterly unyielding. Heather heard Heather McNamara's soft moans from the other side and resolved to keep her own mouth shut even if she had to bite through her lip to do it. She wasn't a coward. "Come on, let me set things on fire already," she muttered, not that she could be heard through the thorns, and cursed herself for phrasing it as _let me_.

Heather would decide for herself when setting things on fire was necessary; she was only listening to the spite ghost because she'd clearly survived some years here. Heather Chandler listened to people when she was sure they actually knew more than her and weren't just blowing smoke out of their asses - even if she'd never admit to it.

 _It might've been my fault, but I didn't intend it to end in death_ , Heather thought. _Sorry, Martha. Thanks for trying whatever it is you're doing._

They had to run downhill, the path of least resistance. The thorns grew so dark they were like small black jewels - like black diamonds, hard enough to tear through flesh and a thousand more things besides, and still glint as dark and beautiful as before, wet blood staining them as an additional ornament. Their feet sped along a downward slope. _Easy is the descent to ..._ ran an old proverb Heather didn't remember.

And finally they had reached the bottom of the slope. It didn't go down any more. There was only the harsh upward path they had run from, thorns tightening back into place already, and a steep impassable hill before them.

They'd been led into a trap. Herded, like cattle. The Thorn Lady's prisoners and prizes. Nowhere to escape now. Heather felt, rather than heard, Martha's nod, and let the Thorn Lady's forest burn. They couldn't be in any worse trouble anyway.

Heather made an inferno, towering fires that turned thorns into ashes, and yet the endless forest grew back. Burn in one part, grow all over again. No matter what she burned, the encroaching thorns pressed in on them once more. Wherever the Thorn Lady was, she was fucking laughing.

Then Heather saw another light, beyond where her fire burned. A distant flare of silver, pure as the stars. It bobbed and weaved amongst the thorns, marking its way through despite all the odds. Heather lowered her flames. She thought she knew what this was. _Bit awkward playing damsel in distress again, but hell, I'll take what help I can get._

"I didn't know you were a pyromaniac, Heather," Heather McNamara stuttered.

"I'm not normally." Sparkling dialogue, Heather thought grumpily; the only redeeming factor was that surely they would leave this place soon.

The Paladin rode heavily and rode hard. Her silver shield glowed with its own light, fending off the black thorns that sought to tangle and wound her. She ruthlessly cut through branches and creepers with her shining sword. Her yellow horse neighed a loud battle-cry. A dark figure rode behind her in the unenviable, uncomfortable place over Primrose's buttocks - for which Heather Chandler had just enough human pity to sympathise after her own experience.

Heather sent an illuminating jet of fire into the air, signalling their rescuer, setting weird lights along Heather's and Martha's blackened cheeks. She supposed she must look as awful as they did, filthy and grimy with briars knotted in her hair, her skin covered with thorn-tracks.

Not one of the thorns could pierce the Paladin's armor, and slowly but surely she rode down the valley. She dismounted in the small clearing. The black figure behind her also slid off the horse's back, not without a pained groan that Heather understood.

"Let the children go," the Paladin said, voice bright and carrying like a silver bell from her metal visor.

That provoked the Thorn Lady's appearance. She came in a storm of rising black hedges, walls so high they blotted out all light. They rose on all sides of the valley, imprisoning them in the pincer of steep hills on both sides.

"How many times is it now, little knight?" The cracked old woman's voice swept around them like pelting hail in a thunderstorm.

"This makes thrice I have ridden to your domain to rescue captives," the Paladin answered. "I intend it to be thrice successful."

A dry chuckling sound came from the brambles, as if of old thorns rustling against each other. "But tell me, did or did not your master the Star caution you against stealing what is mine by right?"

"The Star is a colleague, not my master," the Paladin said. "We work toward the same end with different ambits. As the less powerful, mine is the wider. And so I say to release these children. They have suffered many dangers for the sake of their friends, and have earned their way to their own world."

"I say I do not quarrel with you yet," the Thorn Lady said, and then came another dry chuckle. "I offer easy terms. You say that the children are brave heroes, heroes who would sacrifice anything for the sake of a friend?"

 _Not what I'd say about myself, but it's nice to have someone else say it for you_ , Heather thought, and inwardly smirked. She'd done practically everything herself; fought and faced a giant toad, sent the Paladin to rescue the others, solved a problem for three talking trees, freed a ghostly flapper, and sent up fires to light their escape path. _Just have to find Veronica and Heather Duke, and we're out of here._

"Of course I say it," the Paladin said.

"Then I set all free and clear to leave my realm - even including you, dead knight," the Thorn Lady said. "Provided Heather Chandler agrees to remain."

They all looked to Heather, then, even the horse Primrose, frightened eyes in the dim silvered light of the Paladin's shield, all eight of them circling inexorably to meet her. Only J.D. didn't bother to look up, staring at the ground with an arm on the flank of the horse.

"Let the murderer show what she is," the Thorn Lady said. "She released my ghost and I demand a fair exchange. You have a simple choice, a path to end your friends' suffering or a path to hurt them all. Will you swear yourself to me?"

"If you want to keep me, I'll burn your thorns down," Heather promised.

"They grow back," the Thorn Lady said. "If you truly came here to help your friend, you know what to do. Swear, or watch them all suffer."

Heather was silent. Just for a moment; she was thinking. Then the Thorn Lady's laughter crackled around her like dry twigs set aflame. She looked into Heather McNamara's desperate, pained eyes. She saw the sense of betrayal there, a chance of hope so near and yet denied by Heather's silence. Heather thought: _The Thorn Lady took from me. She has won._

"Thank me. I have revealed her selfishness," the Thorn Lady commanded. "She has loved no one but herself all along. Enjoy your afterlife here and forever."

The thorns crackled gleefully. Heather McNamara laid a shaking hand on Martha's shoulder, instinctively rather than deliberately reaching out to the nearest person for support, but she couldn't have struck harder at Heather if she'd tried. Heather wanted to defend herself, but the words stuck in her throat, caught by the black dust of thorns and ash.

"It is best you know what she is," the Thorn Lady said. "She would not make the choice to save you."

"She should not have to," said the Paladin. She unbuckled a dull leather pouch around her waist. Immediately, a silver light glowed from within. She took out a small glowing ball, so bright you could not look at it directly, like a tiny pure star. Heather felt an indrawn breath even from the Thorn Lady, as if this magic was far more powerful than she'd expected. Powerful and precious and valuable beyond words - and something the Paladin sacrificed.

"I call a Convocation of Cardinals!"

She flung the globe to the ground. Its white light split apart, flying and spreading in a thousand different directions. It bore light all across the Thorn Lady's globe.

Paths of shining light unfurled before them, between them, small passages weaving across and around each other in waves while four wide ribbons of white light shone in four broad unrolling paths. The cardinal points of the compass-rose: a world of north and south and east and west, the powers of the realm approaching them.

A throne of thorns was the first to appear upon the path, drawn in the west. A gnarled old woman sat there, her brown fingernails curled over themselves in tight concentric rings that might be six feet long if they were somehow unrolled. The Thorn Lady. To the east formed a pole made from a grey plant, draped by a wizened figure in grey rags with a hunchback. Grey Willows, Heather thought, the name whispered to her once. To the south, last to appear, was an old person with white robes and white hair, their skin textured like the pages of an old book and their eyes glowing silver. One moment Heather was sure it was a man, the next certain she saw a woman. The Star, no doubt.

 _So there was another choice_ , Heather thought. _Not agreeing to the first deal was smart, not selfish. Would I damn another person to save my own skin?_

 _... Depends on the person_ , she thought.

Veronica and Heather Duke walked together from the path in the north, looking as surprised as Dorothy on the yellow brick road. Behind them sat only an empty chair to hold the north's place. It had been seared black and cracked open with some long-ago fire.

"The four cardinal points of this realm," the Paladin said. She approached the Star, the tilt of her head reverent for all she'd said the Star wasn't her boss. "The Thorn Lady, empress of the West. Grey Willows, lord of the East. The Star, caretaker of the South. And I see there is yet no chieftain of the north. Not since the fire ... But that is another story."

"We made the north fight over a hank of straw and sticks in their stupid tournament," Heather Duke boasted. No one seemed to pay her much attention.

"The mortals have endured travail and proved themselves," the Paladin said. "They live and are far from their allotted span. The laws of this land say we must send them back." Her visor, then, turned to Martha. "You have a claim of revenge. Are you willing to lay it aside?"

 _If someone murdered me I'd probably fling them to the Thorn Lady and laugh_ , Heather thought, _even if it was a real accident ... not the sort of accident where I told her to kill herself because I wanted to hurt her._

"Heather killed me," Martha said. "But I've learnt that I don't - Revenge is not the most important thing." Her voice rang out clear as a bell across the gathering. She was dignified and powerful in spite of the dirt and grime on her, in spite of how she looked. "It was the Fire Woman who taught me, who offered me revenge. I've served her purposes all along and did not realize it."

"Chandler's grandmother is the Fire Woman," J.D. said.

Heather looked down at her hands. Made sense; if her powers were fire in this world, so should her grandmother's be. She supposed there must be a reason why Grandma hadn't shown her face: too scared of being yelled at or worse. Wouldn't she just hear about it when they returned.

"Send them back," said the Star. The voice was low and smooth, rippling out in a smooth-peanut-butter-sound somewhere between alto and tenor pitch.

"I concur," the Thorn Lady said. She clicked her tongue against brown thorny teeth. "Give the Fire Woman some trouble instead of me."

The third grey figure shrugged wrinkled shoulders. "I'll not play two against one," said Grey Willows. Heather caught a swift narrowed glance from J.D. to him, a grim thinning of lips. Ominous; the Paladin must have rescued him from that same cardinal point.

No time to think about it. Heather Duke thrust herself forward. "I'm not going back until I can protect myself. From _her_." She stared at Heather, and her face was set into almost the same startling, murderous bitterness Heather had seen on McNamara's face in the graveyard. "If you let her return, we'll all be her slaves. Again."

"You think I don't even deserve to live, Heather?" Heather said. Old habits of venting, letting the most pathetic member of her group feel it when she was angry, found their way through without thought. "You little fucking ingrate. I took you into the most powerful clique in school. I fought through this netherworld to save Heather's ass."

Heather Duke's grimace turned into a bitter grin. "Case in point."

Heather backtracked, just a little. _Second time I got played today. Don't let it happen again._ "I didn't ask for any of this, Heather," she said. She raised her palms, looking conciliatory and more gentle. "I didn't know I had power. I'll be nice and quit making you do things. All of you."

"You'll break that promise the instant you feel mildly inconvenienced," Duke said.

Heather had to admit she wasn't wrong. Any person used whatever power they had when it suited their interests; anyone who tried to convince themselves otherwise was lying. "Maybe. What are you going to do about it, Heather? Anyone else want to play burn the witch?" She cast a defiant look around her somewhat-friends. She knew that challenges to Heather Chandler would be as futile as they'd ever been. "Thought not. Open that door, Star."

The beginnings of a silver door in the air formed. The Star's idea of a door was delicate work, chased silver scrolls like leaves that surrounded a blurred picture that came into gradual focus. Heather saw glimpses of a real-world-mundane-room, dining table and scattered porcelain teacups, wet pools in the wood around them. It was perfect.

"This girl longs for power," said the Thorn Lady's creaking voice. "Understandable. Sensible. I offer a boon. Power for her, in return for her longing."

The words "I accept" came out of Duke's mouth before anyone could even try to stop her.

It was a harsh power, adamant-hard and sharp as steel. It rose from the thorns under Duke's feet, filling her like red-hot metal poured into a mold, covering her like impassable walls. As it grew, so too did she. Heather glimpsed a flash of a new bracelet below Duke's sleeve, stretched on an ever-growing wrist. The unfashionable thing split apart to fall on the rest of the thorns below her. Veronica had to jump back from her friend grown into a giantess, grown into a titan now. It was above twenty feet tall and sheathed in smoke-colored metal. It barely had any human features left at all, a colossus that left heavy footprints in the earth below its feet. It bore a sword the width of a bus. And, as it swung recklessly in Heather's direction, it seemed it didn't have any concern left in it for the lives of its former friends.

"I give you the Iron Duchess," the Thorn Lady pronounced.

They scattered as she attacked.


	22. Where There Are No Penalties Or Payments

"Heather, it's me!" Veronica screamed.

The blow, Heather thought, was mostly aimed at her, but Duke as she was now - the Iron Duchess - didn't seem to care about Veronica getting in the way. The metal colossus attacked without mercy or discrimination.

Heather ran for it. She launched another fireball in the giant's direction. The Iron Duchess didn't notice it any more than she would a puff of air. Her flames weren't hot enough to penetrate that mass of metal; Heather grimly thought that nothing would be. Her knees and arms were scraped and bleeding, rolling around among thorns to get away.

 _Make it to the door and to the hell with it_ , Heather thought. Not that she'd trust any of the idiots that surrounded her to clean up this fucking mess. Heather was between the door and the giant, thinking whether to make a coward's move and run while she still could, demanding more from herself than that.

The giant deliberately raised an iron foot. She brought it down on the silver flicker, on the fine scrollwork edging about the portal. It splintered into a broken, dark mess. No one was escaping. A vast iron hand reached out in Heather's direction once more.

At least she could bring smoke as well as fire. Heather made a wall of black smoke to cover herself and ran for it again, while the Iron Duchess struck at the next enemy she could see.

The Paladin left her sword sheathed. She was in front of Martha and Heather McNamara, putting her shield in the way of a fierce blow. The silver metal buckled in one strike. She fell aside, rolling over thorns. The shield was crumpled, broken as she picked it up again. The silver star and painted rose were ruined and indistinguishable, a mass of scrap metal.

Martha made a set of complicated gestures with her hands. What looked like a lump of clay in her palm burst into a cloud of dust, flying around where the iron giant's eyes should have been. Heather could tell that she tried to deceive it, compel it to seek a different direction, but it wasn't working. Veronica got up from the ground and tried something similar, her voice rising higher and hoarser.

"Stop it come back with us we will help you you are not a monster - " Veronica tried to shout. The giant's footfall rose above her head. Heather set the ground under the other leg aflame, burning a hole below the giant. It lost its footing and stumbled just enough to let Veronica run.

The little grey creature from the West had left, fucked off into some pathetic little crevice or other. Heather glared at the sickly-saintly-good thing called the Star that was left, resting at its cardinal point, hands tucked inside in a pristine white robe.

"Help us," she said. "You say you're the forces of good and light and fluffy kittens. Then save my friends and help your precious Paladin."

The Star's silver eyes didn't have pupils or sclera or whites, and yet they looked at Heather almost like that fucking counselor did after Martha's death, like J.D. reaching into her and knowing what she felt without having to ask. As if it knew Heather's blood-guilt and her petty cruelties, how often she'd knock others down like bowling pins for sport and to make herself feel stronger.

"Stop her," Heather asked, laying down her pride. Martha and Heather McNamara were on their knees behind a thorn bush. "I'll trade something with you if you stop her."

The Star spoke cool and calm and levelly to her. "There is one way I can grant that particular request. Do you ask a boon to kill the girl that you turned into this?"

"For fuck's sake don't kill her," Heather said. What was the Star's excuse - some bullshit I'm-so-powerful-unleash-me-and-it's-nuclear-or-nothing? Or even worse, it was a smug I'm-teaching-you-a-moral-lesson-here-you-lowly-mortal.

Heather went back into the fray. She tried to fire the ground even deeper, trap Heather Duke in a black ash pit, but she wasn't strong enough. Her power began to exhaust her and her fireballs faltered. The Iron Duchess turned its attention once more to her. The Paladin finally drew and raised her sword. It was a toothpick held against the giant's butcher knife as if she could somehow block it with pure heroic resolve or some shit like that. For a moment the two blades met, a tiny silver sting and a vast mass of steel. It only lasted a moment. The Paladin's sword shattered, and the Iron Duchess knocked her flat yet again. Another ant crushed in her way.

Martha pushed Heather McNamara back, as if she could protect her. She made another gesture, calling on whatever ghostly powers she had. Broken thorns clambered up the Iron Duchess' legs, tangling together like black rope. But the bonds were too weak to do more than mildly inconvenience the giant. They broke and split apart in a moment. The Thorn Lady had fulfilled her promise to give power. Heather McNamara helped Martha up the hill.

Heather stumbled, fell. This time her bleeding knees refused to bring her up from the ground. The fire in her was only a dribble of a few ashes, now. The Iron Duchess raised her sword for another blow. Veronica and J.D. dragged Heather out of the way. The ground shook with an earthquake and the Iron Duchess sunk her blade twenty feet into the earth.

"You're supposed to have a power too," Veronica argued with J.D. "Do something, dammit! You idiotic slug - "

"It's not exactly helpful to know she doesn't feel any pain!" J.D. snapped. "Or much of anything."

 _Fucking useless power. I knew it from the start_ , Heather thought. They were going to die here. Heather set off a useless fireball over the Iron Duchess' eye.

"No. It helps," Veronica said. Her mouth curved in her _I'm smarter than you and have a plan_ grin. "Don't fight her. Sometimes the only way to win is to give in. Star!" she called out. "I crave a boon. I'm told I have potential for power. Might I trade that power ... for a chance to bring my friend back?"

The Star uncoiled hands from sleeves, spoke a few soft words. Veronica was bathed in silver light. She became the cynosure of all eyes, the center of everyone's gaze. Even the Iron Duchess had eyes only for her.

"Stand down," Veronica commanded. Though her voice wasn't shaped by any compulsion, it carried and sung. The balance shifted toward her, the world hanging in waiting. The Iron Duchess raised her sword as if to bring it down on Veronica's head. And yet something stopped her from lowering it in a last deadly blow. "I won't fight, Heather. Can you kill someone who is powerless, someone who trusts you?" Veronica raised empty hands, palms flat in the air, moving like a line of lilting melody in a song. "Will you still fight if no one is fighting you?"

No killing blow had struck yet.

"You traded away longing," Veronica said. "You lost a heart of flesh." She walked fearlessly toward the giant. For that moment they could breathe, waiting, watching. She seemed to shine with an inner light. "I traded away my power, and I can give a heart back to you. It's the only trade where there are no penalties and no payments, and what is given is indistinguishable from what is received."

Closer she came, to where the iron giant could strike her down with a single careless flick, a fly buzzing up and offering itself to the swatter. Powerless and yearning, risking her life, reaching out to save someone she still cared about. Perhaps she cared about her more than any other.

"Put down your sword. Take my hand," Veronica said. The Iron Duchess stood stock-still.

The iron gauntlet moved. Heather held her breath. Was that a loosening, untightening in the gigantic iron fingers? She wanted to see it, so of course she would conjure that faint shift of shadowed grey to be a favorable omen. She couldn't save Veronica from this when it went wrong; no one could.

A slow uncurling. A gradual reaching for something beyond battles and power and dominance. The vast hand shifted, freed its grip piece by piece from the hilt of that deadly sword. The hilt trembled like the branch of a tuning fork. It teetered on the edge. Then it fell to the ground, a deadly thing that they had to flee, scattering clods of earth and thorns about as it dropped.

Heather Duke asked for help for once in her life. Iron hand met a hand of flesh.

Another flash of light, silver washing over the landscape. Heather had to blink and look aside, blinded. The outlines of the iron giant faded away. She was diminished, washed out and brought down to a human's height. Tints of pink flesh replaced grey adamant. Veronica's gift of longing had replaced the Thorn Lady's boon. A powerless - but much more pleasant - Heather Duke.

She held Veronica's hand and crushed it tight between her fingertips. "I told you to take power but you gave it away," she said. Her voice caught as if she was sobbing. "Because of me?"

Veronica showed off a heroic shrug. "I won the argument," she quipped.

The hand-holding turned into a pulverizing hug, and then somehow a messy, dirt-and-lipstick-stained kiss.

The Star bowed their head, almost as if in reverence. "An act of love and sacrifice. The door opens once more."

 _Wonderful. Not just true love, but epic, fairy-tale, save-the-day true love_ , Heather thought. _I give them 'till graduation, tops._

Veronica and Duke disappeared, back to the real world, waking up from their dream but holding each other all the while. Martha walked Heather McNamara up to the gateway.

"Wait," McNamara said. "You were in my body, before. Couldn't you ... couldn't it be you that goes back to Earth?"

She sounded sincere, not putting on a case of altruistic stupidity for the Star's or anyone else's approval. She looked at Martha like she would a bosom buddy, not an enemy or a joke.

"It sounds like you were better at being me," McNamara said. "If everyone jumped off a cliff, I probably would too. You didn't make anyone kill themselves. You probably aren't failing math. You should be the one to go through that door."

It looked as if McNamara and the spite ghost had bonded. Heather kept her expression and red-hot feeling about that locked away inside her. _You're_ never _making that swap because I won't let you, Heather,_ she thought.

Martha Dunnstock put a comforting hand on McNamara's shoulder. "You need to go back. Your canary loves you. I saw that when I was being you. And Heather Chandler ... she did risk her life to come and save you. You're not worthless, Heather. You want to be friends?"

"I'd like that," McNamara said. "How would that work?"

"I'm dead, but it's not all bad," Martha said. "There is something that lies beyond this, and I'll be there. Go back in peace. Give that canary a treat for me."

"At least you could wait a while," McNamara said. "I mean wait a while for me to come back, after I'm old and stuff. It would be nice to have a friend waiting for me. You could help other people trapped here."

Martha mulled it over. "Looks like my afterlife is going to be empty without the revenge plans. I'll have time to try something else. Perhaps I could be a paladin's squire." Martha and the Paladin exchanged a pleasant look, sizing up one another and almost immediately liking what they saw.

"Good. See you later." McNamara folded Martha in a bear hug and tripped lightly through the silver door.

Martha didn't have anything more to say to Heather, but she caught at J.D.'s sleeve as he passed by. "Before you go, you need to know that your father is dying," she said. "I don't know that he'll end up here. Most people don't, but there's a chance."

J.D.'s expression barely changed, though he ought to have felt something, whether it was relief or loss or gloating. Heather felt bizarrely sickened by the lack of display. He inclined his head to the Paladin and spoke quietly. "Can you make sure my mom doesn't have to deal with him?"

"I'll do my best."

Then like the others J.D. put himself against the silver door in the air. Only this time, it was as if he'd put his hand on glass. It wouldn't break and let him through, for all he tried.

"Chandler - " He gestured to Heather. She put a hand through easily; she felt the way part for her, felt the pull of her own hand on a wooden table about to give her a splinter. Heather McNamara, Veronica and Duke even if she didn't always like them, her parents, her life in Westerburg - Heather Chandler had every reason to go back. She withdrew. She grabbed J.D.'s hand and tried to drag him through with her, but she felt an impassable barrier there no matter what she tried.

"I warned you," the Paladin said, gently enough, but utterly impersonal - she felt as if she was talking to a stranger. She kept her distance, not even walking close to them. "If there is nothing you care for, you cannot return to your world."

J.D. turned away bitterly. "Well, that leaves one free fucking body," he said. "You looking for one to rent, Martha? Might as well take it."

"No. Like the Paladin said, you need to find something you love enough to return to the world."

He raised a scornful eyebrow.

"We're not so different," Martha said. "I despaired, and turned it on myself. You would have turned it on other people as well. I was wrong about you. I think we could have been friends."

"That doesn't help."

Heather looked back. A grey, spindling figure raised his hand. Grey Willows would have his bond, and J.D. shuffled back toward him.

"No, asshole," Heather snapped. "I brought you into this world and I'm not leaving alone. We'll think of something."

There came a disturbance in the silver door. Not on their side; a thing from the other side. The surface of the door rippled, flamed into a painfully bright red-gold. That which emerged from it wasn't human - or at least, didn't look like any real human normally did in life. A glowing, magnificent woman, or at least the shape of one, her body sheathed in unending fire that showed almost no features or weaknesses.

The Fire Woman.

Heather's grandmother. Heather's own power turned to fire in this world, so she guessed it wasn't too different for Grandma Chandler. But she looked like a living candlestick instead of like a person, her power flowing dangerously around her, drawing attention and dominating above them all.

Heather thought: _So this is what she really is, on the inside._

"You're late, Heather," the Fire Woman said. "What's the hold-up?"

"A lot of talk about the Fire Woman, and finally we glimpse a glimmer of the burning pinwheel," Grey Willows said, and giggled.

She ignored him magnificently, and held out a burning hand to Heather. "Come with me. You've achieved your goal and I will help you cross the barrier."

"You trapped me," Heather accused. "You trapped all of us in crappy fights. I bet we could've avoided all the trouble ... "

"Challenges that you all overcame with brio," her grandmother said.

"I didn't know you were a real person before," Martha said. She looked at Heather's grandmother with a hint of fear on her face. "I thought the Fire Woman was one who exists but was never born, an archetype from dreams taken form - like the other Cardinals. I even thought she was my teacher."

"I taught you well," the Fire Woman said. "Didn't you get everything that you wanted? You learned for yourself that vengeance wasn't what you truly needed." When Martha didn't reply, she turned back to her granddaughter. "Hurry, child; perfectly good gateways don't open every day."

"You forgot someone," Heather said.

"Jason," her grandmother called. J.D. hung his head, standing next to the wizened grey creature. He didn't look up.

"I'm afraid I made a mistake with that boy." The Fire Woman made a sigh and a shrug. "His wish for death is his own. Don't blame yourself for him, Heather. If I hadn't sent him here he would have ended himself some other way, perhaps a worse one. He was never your responsibility to fix, and you were at least kinder to him than you were to Martha. You know that you're drowning in this place. Take my help and save yourself before you can save others."

She stepped toward the door. Heather reflexively took a step forward, mirroring her. Then a deep bass-baritone voice flared past both of them, like the rushing wind.

"No. You will both stay until I have my bond."

An exceedingly irritated gargantuan toad, its right eye still dripping tears, paced up to the clearing. It stood there, panting, slimy sides heaving with exertion. It looked out of place between the dry, broken thorns, its large body dripping moisture and mud, looking if anything rather uglier than the last time Heather had seen it. "You broke our contract," the Toad in the Well accused the Fire Woman.

"You sold _me_ to a giant toad!" Heather complained. "And people think I'm the ungrateful granddaughter. My dad is so going to hear about this one."

"Be quiet a moment, dear." The Fire Woman nodded at the toad. "I take it you found my granddaughter annoying. She's excellent at that."

"I founded your wealth and you made a bargain with me," the toad croaked. "You will pay for what I have endured - my eye, my children burnt - you will most certainly pay, mark my words."

"She was annoying enough to bring you here alone," the Fire Woman repeated. "Alone and away from your well and its protections."

The toad caught on. There was a flicker of consternation in its bulbous eyes. It flinched back. But that was only for a moment - then the Fire Woman released her power on him.

The toad flamed. It barely managed a scream before its throat must have burnt through. Flame devoured it. Heather smelt BBQ toad: vaguely like chicken, vaguely like caf mystery roast.

 _Definitely never eating that again_.

The flames diminished. Heather saw charred black flesh with white bone protruding from it. Next the Toad in the Well seemed to collapse in on itself, the burnt corpse disappearing to wherever dead things in this world might disappear. It was obvious he was gone, wiped off the game board, and become an ex-toad. Heather hadn't chosen to try to stop it: he'd wanted to keep her as a prisoner.

"Well done, Heather," the Fire Woman said. "Now come."

"Not without answering to me," the Paladin said. She was a battered knight as she made her way over to stand by them. Her lovely silver shield was twisted and broken, her armor filthy and dented, her sword missing. "You should never have sent these children here. Speak to the Convocation about what you have done."

"Out of my way," the Fire Woman said. "You have no power over me."

The Star's head tilted upward. Their long pale fingers made a sketch in the air like a cat's cradle on string. "She speaks true, Paladin. The Toad was a denizen and never mortal. The Fire Woman has broken no bond and bears no blood guilt - not even in her past. In law you cannot touch her."

"Laws can be wrong," the Paladin said.

Heather frowned, wondering what she was missing. Her grandmother had power; how could she not have killed someone? She hadn't denied it when Heather talked to her. It could have been an accident, but that would still have counted as spilt blood, wouldn't it? Great-Grandmother Chandler had the same power and she was murdered by her servants, leaving her daughter behind. It must've been hell being a daughter raised by someone who could force you to obey. J.D. couldn't feel emotions off Heather's grandmother; maybe she used that technique to lock guilt and other conflicting feelings away.

Grandma Chandler seemed in an awful hurry now. "Heather, come," she repeated. She didn't have to add the other half of that: _Heather, come or else I'll order your friends to do something really nasty._ Heather had just seen her kill without hesitation or guilt.

"Think of something, dammit," she told J.D., hoping against hope he'd finally listen to her. She looked back at him just before she stepped through the door with her grandmother. Already he was with Grey Willows. His eyes were half-lidded, as if he was in a doze. The wizened grey creature had a hand wrapped around his neck in a parody of affection or dependence, too close. Then she was through the door, her grandmother pulling her by the wrist.

Heather felt fire surround her. Colours swirled around them and she had no idea which way was down or up. She tried to reach for something physical, feel the table like she'd felt before, but the flames surrounded her. They didn't burn or hurt her. Warmth enveloped her like a blanket and Heather felt almost like going to sleep. _Like hell I'd ever sleep in a blankie with my grandmother watching_ , she thought. She could feel her grandmother's power - not stronger than her own, but far more fine-tuned and practiced and skilled like a razor-edged scalpel - and then she felt something like cords binding her.

Another bargain, signed and sealed. Heather could almost hear the dry dead crackling of the Thorn Lady's laughter. A bargain that included her. She struggled, but her grandmother must have long planned for this to happen.

Heather woke up. She looked down at a smashed cup between her hands, tasted a bitter ashy taste in her mouth. She raised her head. Her vision was blurry. She could see Heather McNamara and Veronica and Duke already stirring, stretching in their chairs, restless.

"Sleep," somebody commanded. Heather struggled against her own eyelids. The others' heads collapsed to the table like discarded Barbies. The voice had sounded weird to Heather, too high and too breathy, not what she was used to hearing. But it was familiar too.

With a shock of vertigo, Heather looked at the young woman across the table. She looked like a young Grandma Chandler might have done, once. She was lusciously pretty and dazzingly confident, wearing the red jacket Heather had chosen for herself that morning. She spoke through watermelon-pink lips with Heather's own favorite lipgloss. She was Heather Chandler and she was -

Heather looked down at old, wrinkled fingers. They were her own hands. No, her grandmother's hands. She could barely move them; they fluttered out of her control and ached painfully.

Her grandmother - Heather Chandler facing Heather Chandler - nodded almost companionably at her. "I'm afraid I put something extra in my own tea," she said. "It should take its full effect soon. Since my body was mine when I poisoned myself, I doubt I'll bear any stain for my suicide."

Heather cursed her, but the words came out tangled. Her heart beat slowly and raggedly. She looked across with hatred at her own body - at the person who had stolen everything from her. She was meant to die here, die old and ugly and in despair, her grandmother to walk out with youth and beauty and power and life. That last seemed the cruellest of all. Heather Chandler did not want to die.

"Good night, dear."

—

"For in love there are no penalties and no payments, and what is given is indistinguishable from what is received." - Eleanor Farjeon, Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard


	23. Revocation

Heather Chandler, not herself, stared at her grandmother wearing her body like a hand puppet.

"Change us back," Heather ordered. The words were slow and difficult in coming out of her grandmother's mouth, but they came. She reached with all the power she had, and yet all her strength met a newer and stronger force. Her grandmother only smiled - more of a smirk, like and unlike Heather had seen on her own face in countless mall-booth photos.

 _She planned this. The old bitch planned this all along. She used Martha to bring me to where she could steal my body._

"Not the ... first," Heather insisted. Her grandmother had done this too skillfully for it to be the first. Some of the old puzzle pieces she'd had in her mind came together, all too late.

 _You're me. You're her. You could never be anything but cruel_ , said the ghost girl, looking like Heather's grandmother might've done sixty years ago. Her own mother sold her to the trees. Accustomed from birth to obeying orders, she'd given in.

"Not my grandmother," Heather insisted, mumbling. "Great-grandmother. You did this before."

When Great-Grandmother used her powers too much, she was killed by her own servants. She found a way back to the world through her child.

"Call me your grandmother; I spent seventeen hours giving birth to your father. A highly unpleasant memory," Heather's body said, the words incongruous coming from Heather's own mouth.

Maybe she'd even done this many times before. Generations of Heather Chandlers, made to order to hold and host power and eternal life for their matriarch.

"Give up, Heather," her grandmother said. "It's not as if you deserve anything you once held. Loving parents who'd get a 'fuck you' before a thank you. Friends and enemies who both rejoiced at the news of your death. You drove Martha Dunnstock to her death because it amused you, and how many other classmates have you made to want to destroy themselves? You know perfectly well the great harm you did to your friend Heather Duke. Even for your friend Heather McNamara, you'd give up nothing you couldn't spare already. The place between worlds generally teaches something about one's true self. For you, that's a selfish, unpleasant, and very childish bully, a tiny piranha in a small and stagnant pond.

"You don't deserve to live."

Heather felt her own power fighting her, forcing the poison to do its work. She could barely breathe. She tried to croak out for help; whatever sounds she made, her sleeping friends didn't wake. _No, fuck you too, Grandma_ , she thought, _I_ don't _deserve to die._

She didn't have a choice.

Heather felt herself ripped away from her body again, against her will. She screamed her despair.

She found herself once more in Betwixt-and-Between, standing next to the Fire Woman.

There was the battered Paladin and Martha Dunnstock, J.D. next to them with folded arms, his black coat moving in some dramatically convenient wind. "Realized I had something to trade," he snarled at the Fire Woman. "You knew Grey Willows wanted to feel things, so you set me up. But a connection goes both ways. He used me; I can use him. I traded him to the Star."

"For re-education," the Star said calmly. The wizened grey man sat on a padded chair next to the Star's throne; he already looked slightly more sanitary.

The Fire Woman shrugged. She had changed. This time she burned an incandescent white-hot, as impossible to look at directly as staring into the sun. More powerful than her red-gold before. Heather understood why that was. She could feel it inside her: the power there was a sputtering, weak flop compared to the searing and sure fire it had been.

Her grandmother hadn't just made a deal to swap bodies with her. She'd swapped abilities. Heather hadn't been wrong: _In a choice between beauty, riches, and wisdom, Grandma Chandler would always choose riches._

"You stole my power," Heather accused.

"I traded you mine. Not that you understand how to use it," her grandmother said.

"I'll figure it out." Heather raised the fire inside her. "Don't think you're leaving so easily this time."

"You've seen too much, Heather. It seems I'll have to kill you personally before changing into something more comfortable," her grandmother said. "I'll take no pleasure in it."

A gout of white fire flew at Heather. It was too late to respond; she was paralyzed in place. Then there was a burning pain in her shoulder, in her arm. Too sharp to be a burn. Heather smelt feathers and flesh. She was flying, falling through the air. A giant sharp beak tossed her up, brutally fast, then on her way down she was caught by a wide feathered back.

It was the eagle she'd seen at a distance, the one who'd snapped up the golden apple she'd thrown. Heather rode astride the giant eagle's back, clinging to the tips of brown feathers edged with gold.

"America is beautiful?" she said.

Heather looked back. Martha Dunnstock was missing in action. _Run away like some coward, or doesn't care to rescue me._ J.D. was useless; the Fire Woman put him down without bothering to kill, bowled him over on his back with a single blow of flung fire. But he'd survived a similar wound of late, and slowly rose to his feet.

The Paladin stood in her battered armour, her shield and sword already destroyed, and made as if she'd rush the Fire Woman anyway. But the Star held up a hand. "Defend, but you cannot attack," she was commanded. _The Star's a useless old fuck_ , Heather thought. "She bears no stain. Not yet, anyway."

The Paladin pushed J.D. behind her, impersonally, as if she'd have done the same for any mortal. Heather gasped and clung tight when the giant eagle buckled under her. She burrowed into the feathers against her will. The eagle dived down to the Fire Woman and raked her with beak and claws. She punched back, hard. Flames spiralled around them as the eagle fled into the air, dashing and dodging. Then back down the eagle went to try and wound Heather's grandmother.

Heather reached for the power her grandmother had forced her to trade. It was smaller and weaker than her own, but fire nonetheless met fire. She aimed like she wanted to kill. She gave cover to the eagle's attacks.

But she couldn't keep it up. The eagle screamed in pain. Feathers in its right flank smouldered and burned. It rolled in mid-air. Heather fell and landed hard. She knocked against the Paladin's hard armor and rolled around in the dirt.

Fire bloomed around Heather. She reached out to hold it off. She couldn't hold. Smelt like they'd soon have crackling roasted Paladin in its own shell. The Fire Woman's power reached closer and closer to swallow them up.

Heather looked up for the eagle, hoping it'd save her again. But there was nothing in the sky. "Fuck it. Ungrateful beast," Heather cursed.

"Call grim Boreas and brother Zephyr, call balmy Eurus and weeping Notus. The four brothers loose and take to the sky. So too let wind scatter fire!"

It seemed just a children's rhyme. The voice was Martha Dunnstock's. She held what looked like an old piece of sacking in her hands. A chill tempest for the moment scattered the flames.

"Just be glad the eagle gave you that much, Heather," Martha lectured. _Oh, you just had to nag and gloat_ , Heather thought. "Normally that kind of creature eats food that looks like us."

The Fire Woman wasn't defeated by Martha; she looked like she was only just getting started. Martha locked glances with her old tutor. Then she stepped aside. Behind her was a wholly black figure of ashes and dust. Heather knew it as the creature that had chased her from Dean's house, had menaced and threatened her as an utterly inhuman being.

"Ash-and-Cinder came in quest of one of those who killed it," Martha told the Fire Woman. She gestured to thin strands of what might have been dark hair, clutched greedily in a black hand. "Veronica left something of herself behind. I should have warned her. I remember that you warned me away from Ash-and-Cinder when we saw it at a great distance.

"You were truly warning _yourself_ away from it."

"One of them feels nothing," said J.D. He looked pale and weak again. "The other feels too much, and it's all bad. Destruction and the aftermath of fire. Death and black charred bones before and behind it. Lust and greed and thwarted fury - and all those true feelings that are too gross and icky to deal with. Looks like she found a way. Ash is what's left after a fire burns ... "

"Ash-and-Cinder is the stain on your soul," Martha said to her teacher. "You separated yourself from what you did to gain your power, you broke yourself into fire and ash. No wonder you feel nothing and the Star senses you as guiltless. Now let's get you back together again."

Ash-and-Cinder needed no encouragement. It had searched for Veronica, but let the strands of hair slip easily away from its fingers as it faced the Fire Woman. In her it saw everything it had yearned for and searched, the other half of its soul and the one being in any world that could fill its bottomless cravings.

Ash-and-Cinder flung itself upon the Fire Woman. The two became one. It was as if they wrestled for dominance, battled in a hell between darkness and red-flaring light. Ash-and-Cinder's black tendrils wrapped around and within the Fire Woman's glowing limbs. They faded down into black lesions, holes like scars in the Fire Woman's skin. Her features became more defined, more human looking. She was a creature of fire and darkness now, a whole being once more.

 _Fuck,_ Heather thought. She knew what had happened. The Fire Woman confirmed it the next moment. She raised a hand and the inferno from it opened a chasm along the Thorn Lady's grounds. Heather kissed the ground again, her mouth full of the taste of ashes and dust, scrambling backward and knowing she'd never make it in time. _Fucking great move there, Martha._

The first Heather Chandler had only become more powerful than before.

—

There are officially three Heathers and three Heather Chandlers in this fic, making a total of five Heathers.


	24. All Debts Repaid

"I said she bore no stain on her soul. That is no longer the case," the Star said. The Paladin nodded, and launched herself at the Fire Woman.

It was obvious the knight was getting the worst of it. They rolled around on the ground, pummeling and punching each other, all subtlety lost. The Paladin's armor grew blackened and burnt beyond the battering it had already endured at Heather Duke's hands.

Heather gave Martha a hard stare. "Got any other bright ideas, Dunnstock?"

"She taught me almost nothing I could use against fire," Martha confessed. "I guess there was a reason for that."

"You don't have to be useless either," Heather told J.D. "My power changed when I came to this world. Yours should have too. My grandmother wanted you to keep the useless power, so she could trade you in a bargain - " He scowled to be reminded of that. He looked weak just watching the Fire Woman, as if every stain of guilt and rage and greed she wore on her black soul poisoned him as well. "Shit or get off the pot, Dean. There's something else you can do."

Heather ran toward the fight. She put herself between the Paladin and the Fire Woman. _Heather Chandler risking her own life for an already dead person she doesn't even know, how stupid is that._ She mustered what she had left and struck back against the one who had stolen her power.

Then a rippling black hole opened in the air, around the Fire Woman's shoulder. She writhed. Heather ignored the pain from her burns and glared in cold-eyed triumph that her gamble paid off.

"I told you so," she snapped.

"Don't get used to it, Chandler." Another black lesion opened by the Fire Woman's body. She writhed and drew back from it. J.D. could hurt her, and Heather widened the breach.

In truth, what J.D.'s power had transmuted into scared Heather, not that she'd ever admit it. The ghost darkly prophesied that he was destined to kill, commit murder on a massive scale. This ability seemed the embodiment of the destruction and despair Martha saw within him. _He'll lose it when he leaves this world_ , Heather told herself.

The Fire Woman fought back. She'd already defeated the Paladin. One last twist and the knight was flung aside like a rag doll, soaring into the air and falling with a clank. Martha rushed to bend over her, doing what she could.

Heather's enemy regathered her power, glowing like a star shot through by darkness. Fire and ash, merged together again. Heather couldn't breathe; the air was too hot. Flames sizzled on her arms, burns so painful she could only keep standing by reminding herself they'd be healed if she won.

For once, Heather and J.D. fought on the same side. He opened those sick black lesions, like gates into pure nothingness, giving the Fire Woman pain. Heather's fire worked with it as if they'd practiced in tandem.

Black holes opened around the Fire Woman to imprison her form. Sheets of returned fire stopped her blows. She didn't seem discouraged. She paused, stuck in place with an arm in the air and a leg awkward behind her, like a Nutcracker dancer frozen between toy soldiers and candycane fairies.

Then Heather saw her change. The humanoid shape grew and thinned into something much more terrible. An elongated face with sharp teeth and twin horns, a long thin body made from twisted black and white-gold strands. It glowed with fiery scales. It flew, spinning and rolling in the air, free from anything that would constrain it. It was a creature out of nightmares. Here there be dragons.

It dived down, mouth breathing a gout of white-hot fire. They'd been fools to think they could stand against something this powerful in the first place. They did what they could to slow the destruction, but they smelt their own flesh burn. Martha did nothing, too much busy with keeping the Paladin un-dead.

Heather turned to J.D., in the middle of torrents of flame. "We're losing," she said.

"There's no _we_ ," the dragon's head hissed. "It's you I want, Heather. Don't make him sacrifice himself for you."

"Not about - sacrifice." J.D. cut off the dragon's mouth with one of his dark gateways. The head snaked around it. " ... I don't walk away from people like you."

The burning tail knocked him to the ground. Heather saw him struggle back to his hands and knees, still trying to fight. He was the sort of person who'd always try to fight, as long as you pointed him at something outside his bleak existence.

It was Heather's power that hurt him. "I know what I have to do, Grandma. You taught me to be greedy. You've made plenty of trades to get you here - so I'm making one now. _I trade my power for a gate into my world, and a few minutes' worth of time._ "

The dragon began a screech. But then the working began. There was a vague look of approval on the Star's face that Heather didn't deign to notice. Her own power - the power that her grandmother had swapped with her - was stripped away.

The dragon had nothing left. It writhed in the air as if it was being eaten up from within.

"Heather Chandler," Heather said. "The ghost. I set you free from the thorns and I know your true name. Come here."

The flapper girl appeared above what was left of the Fire Woman, grey-white and drained of color, her unfashionable dress still loose about her. She wore a terrible smile on her face. "Welcome home, Mother," she said. She descended on her.

Other forces, material and immaterial, gathered in the unearthly sky like coloured ripples over a dark grey ground. Past bargains, trades, covenants the Fire Woman had made in her many journeys here, all to secure power. Now she was powerless, and all her debts fell due. Heather turned away as the dragon writhed, torn and hunted and destroyed from all directions. The deals she had created rebounded on her own head.

Heather grabbed at J.D.'s sleeve. "You have to come with me," she said. "You can't expect me to take care of your damn hamster. Everyone knows I kill houseplants. Heather McNamara used to have this cactus, she went on vacation and left it with me ... she doesn't have it any more."

J.D. shook his head. That wasn't enough, he seemed to say.

"There is something you like," Heather said, trying to force fire into her words. "You like fighting with me. Make that enough." Fighting with was a good description - deliberately ambiguous.

The silver gate was open behind them. Heather glared at him, refusing to let go of his black sleeve. Burn scars marked his face and neck and she probably mirrored his damage.

"You go ahead," he said. He returned her look at last. "Don't worry."

Colours flowed around Heather, first a rainbow and then dizzying white light. Her feet were wrapped around a chair leg. Bewildered, she lifted her hands to stare hard at them and make doubly sure they were really her own. She plucked a curl in her hair and let it spring back. The body of an old woman lay face down on the table, and around her Heather's friends all stirred awake - except for the boy in black.

"I'm alive," Heather Chandler said.


	25. Alive

"I'm alive. I'm alive."

"You've been screaming it for the past five minutes. We know. Shut up, Heather," Duke said wearily.

"Go boil your head, Heather," Heather said.

" _No_ ," Duke retorted. Then she stopped silent, her face frozen mid-word. She stared at Heather with her mouth open like a dead fish before her mind finally came to it. "That wasn't - you didn't."

"My grandmother forced me, I didn't have a choice. I traded away my power," Heather said irritably. "She wanted to steal my body, she's dead now."

She was only just now dead. Part of Heather had hoped she'd get to keep Grandma Chandler's power, even if it wasn't as strong as her own, but it looked like the deal she'd struck didn't allow that loophole. She felt empty, brought down to normal, and she knew that both abilities were gone. _At least Heather Duke doesn't murder me in my sleep now_ , she consoled herself _._

Then she bent over double, clutching her head. Across the room, J.D. moved in the opposite way. He woke up at last.

Heather knew what he'd done.

"You were right, Chandler. It was always more of a vulnerability than a power. So I traded to take some of the edge off. Part to you, part in trade, part left to me. After all, you gave away your power - virtue always deserves a reward."

But giving her a share of that power wasn't truly a reward. Heather's head split open. She pressed her fists to her eyes, trying to hide from the flood of strange tearing waves that swept through her, glittering and sparking, like pop rocks on her tongue that she couldn't crunch or swallow down.

She regained control of herself, but her senses still expanded in every direction. She felt everyone around her and couldn't stop it from happening. J.D. looked at her as if he thought she was a worthy opponent. "I'll let myself out. Be seeing you, perhaps." As if in a flicker of dull black - and layers of complicated pressed-down feelings Heather couldn't begin to name - he was gone.

She felt Heather Duke, reaching out for some newfound freedom, her hand snaking into Veronica's. She could feel something like a scarlet ribbon between them both, drawing them together beyond physicality alone. She felt Heather McNamara, slowly waking up. And she knew that there was one person, at least, who was glad to see Heather Chandler alive.

Noise and movement downstairs. Heather jumped up. _Make that three._ She took the stairs two at a time and opened the front door to her parents.

They looked bewildered and mildly concerned to see her, not amazed at a miracle. And yet they were still glad to find her, a sort of rose-pink feeling of genuine affection. "You dyed your hair?" her mom scolded. "It was so beautiful before! Teenagers and their MTV video games, I suppose, as Father Ripper would say."

"If you want to help us you can, Heather," her father said, "but I think I'll hire someone else to take care of all this." He waved a hand vaguely at the house. "Even after the funeral, it's hard to believe Mother's gone. She was always so lively and active. Is there any special jewellery you want, princess ... ?"

Heather had used the last of Grandma Chandler's power - before the old woman finally died - to do something she already knew how to do. Instead of convincing an entire town that she was dead, she made them know she was alive.

"There's nothing more I want," Heather said.

At sixteen, you still weren't too old to hug your parents once in a while.

—

This time, five people with shovels dug open Heather Chandler's grave and placed Heather Chandler's body there. Grim, grisly work, but they couldn't leave her grandmother's body lying in her house to have uncomfortable questions asked. They chiselled out the birth date and left the death date in place.

"Bye, Grandma, Great-Grandma, whatever. Don't miss you." Heather threw a red rose on the grave and left without looking back.

People remembered Heather at school. They still did what she said; Heather could tell just how many were afraid of her, now.

"There are an article about your death in the paper, Heather, it was the weirdest thing ... "

"Reports of my death were greatly exaggerated."

"A TV show talked about your death as a teenage suicide, Heather ... "

"My grandmother died; we had the same name; people were confused. I'm sure you understand that feeling all too well."

"I'm sure you were, like, dead, Heather ... "

"Yes, I'm dead. Undead. I'm a sixty foot tall mutant vampire werewolf from Mars. Ugh."

"Heather, you haven't handed any homework in for over two weeks ... "

"I've been dead, give me a break!"

Walking through school hallways with her new power wasn't a pleasant thing, but Heather wasn't a quitter. She'd always lived more intensely than most people - wanting and demanding to be on top, knowing for sure that even a detail as tiny as the width of a shoulder pad could make or break your social life - and the new feelings that rushed through her were even stronger sensations.

She knew exactly what she was doing, now. Before, she'd manipulated people with a blindfold on, not quite knowing whether she swung the croquet mallet at the piñata or smashed it against Heather Duke's nose. She'd been damn good at manipulating people even then, but knowing their reactions moment by moment was a whole new world. It would have been so easy, now, to go back to her old ways and twist people to their breaking points for fun and games.

But she usually pushed people the other way. Heather could tell when people around her were in a good mood. A smile, a subtle push, a gracious _That's a decent photo_ to Betty Finn and the girl's pliant attitude immediately reversed itself to something more cheerful. People still did what Heather Chandler said, but sometimes she'd save a freshman's dumb ass from a beating and revel at her sense of power.

Then there were the emotionally fucked up beyond imagination, feelings Heather would never have wanted to enter into of herself. There were a few she could barely feel at all, and she wondered if they were as terrible as her grandmother. Other people felt like stepping into a bath of grease, expensive hairstyle first. Heather had a chance encounter with her ex David and he fled across the street like he'd seen a ghost. Served him right, the fucker. He was a mess of hedonism and demand, getting off on the feeling of being in control. Heather supposed J.D. would have said they made a perfect couple.

She sometimes saw Westerburg High's own personal Jesse James at a distance, keeping away from Heather and her friends as if by a restraining order. She'd sometimes feel him: someone with the same ability as her, reflecting the people around him, a simmering black flame buried under ash. His father died in hospital and left him an orphan, unmourning, alone in a crowd. Heather sighed, and took steps.

And it was time, of course, for Heather Chandler to sweep the school free of all that old supernatural rubbish and start a whole new trend. If Veronica and Heather Duke were going to canoodle in near-public, hold hands, and generally look like a picture-book portrait only missing a flock of doves carrying love hearts in their claws, Heather might as well start a Sherwood branch of PFLAG. She'd be president, of course.

—

"Reports of my death were greatly exaggerated." - Mark Twain


	26. A Full And Free Choice

Heather drove through midnight. She'd taken to these lonely rides when she couldn't sleep, just herself and her beautiful red baby purring below her, convertible top rolled down and the wind blowing through her streaming hair. It was easier for her when Sherwood was mostly dead to the world, dreams and deep sleep muting people's emotions. She'd go out of town and circle the woods, sometimes turn off the motor and stop in the dark for a while, smelling brooding pine needles and crisp cold air. She congratulated herself that she handled this power much better than J.D.

She frowned as she turned the car, noticed a light in a place there shouldn't be lights. Her grandmother's haunted mansion at the back of town. Make that Heather's mansion: her grandmother had left her everything, in trust until the day she turned eighteen. She'd intended to leave herself everything. Heather's father had already started making noises about deeds of gift to her cousins, especially cousin Samantha who'd done so much for her grandmother. Cousin Samantha was a complete and total kiss-up wet blanket priss, but Heather supposed she hadn't rimmed Grandma's ass solely for the inheritance money, since she acted that way around everyone.

Heather turned off her car lights, turned in the driveway. She walked in the darkness, one hand where she could clutch her can of mace in her handbag. When she was close enough, her power told her there was nothing to worry about.

She opened the door and confronted the intruders in the library.

"An explanation would be nice," Heather said.

J.D. shrugged. "I might have got this job thanks to your nepotism, but at least I'm being diligent."

Heather had made the case to her father: poor orphaned schoolkid, after that unknown and unidentified hit and run driver stole Veronica's car and brutally murdered his father. Cut him a break with rent and give him a job, Daddy. Her father was still happy to do things she asked.

J.D. was supposed to be cataloguing the household goods in Grandma Chandler's house for her father to tick off all the boxes as executor. He was supposed to be doing it in normal hours, and not bringing a friend with him.

Heather Duke was curled up with a heavy book with a dead spider's corpse permanently imprinted on the back of it. "Of course I'm here doing all the research. Someone has to deal with monsters like you. And your grandmother," she added, very much as an afterthought.

 _I gave up my power and set her free_ , Heather thought. But that wasn't enough and maybe would never be enough. She'd wanted a follower, not a friend; she'd wanted revenge on Heather Duke for long ago slights that were horribly petty in the cold light of day. She gained that revenge and felt no satisfaction from it.

Heather could feel what she'd done to Duke, over the years. She was a raw mass of bruises inside, bloody-steak red and egg-plant purple and sick festering black. Each new one was flayed still more painfully above old ones that never had a chance to heal. She'd lately found freedom and affection, but it couldn't wipe out the past indignities.

"We had some good times," Heather said. "Usually when we were hurting someone else together. You liked that."

"You're beautiful, Heather. Blame it on me and try to say I'm equally bad. Argue that if you were really dead I'd have taken over and hurt people even worse than you. It's always someone else's fault, isn't it? Even without your power, you can't bear not to win. I'll make sure you and everyone like you loses." Duke smiled a venomous smile, and went back to her book. Heather knew J.D. watched them carefully - mostly in sympathy with Duke, part of him waiting keenly to see what Heather would do, drawn to observe her almost against his will.

"If you want to read my grandmother's shit, you're welcome. I'll even give you your own keys," Heather said. She dropped down to the floor to sit in front of Duke, like equals. "Someone with more patience than me should read this crap and know what to expect when someone else like her shows up. That someone's not going to be me. It's the real world for Heather Chandler, and if you want to play vigilante then sideline support is all you'll get."

Heather could already imagine it like the cover of a bad comic book. Emotion Boy and Powerless Lass - or would the Vomiting Marvel or Bulimia Girl be better titles? - team up against superpowered villains from the shadows, hunting down other murderers in Grandma Chandler's correspondence files. She bit her tongue against making that quip.

"You're not worse than me and I made you what you are," Heather admitted. "Where do we go from here? What do you want, Heather?"

Duke slightly lifted glittering eyes. "Public apology? Get on your knees at a school assembly and tell everyone exactly what you did - all the secrets you ordered me to keep? No one would like you then. You might play at being good for now, Heather, but I know what you really are."

"Maybe I could submit to public humiliation, tell everything to the principal, and do detention until graduation," Heather said. "You could take your pound of flesh from me. You still feel like you want power?"

Duke gave her a bit of a glare. "If knowledge is power, then I'll have a great deal of that. But I've given up on power to the extent that I'll not turn into an emotionless iron giant again. Love was powerful enough to stop that."

A hint of softness crept back into her face. Heather felt the soft, steady glow from Duke at the mention of Veronica, and an opposite, fading twinge in J.D. He'd cared about Veronica, but they'd only dated a few days and he'd spent most of the time lying to her. Mostly because of Heather. She thought he ought to be getting over it by now, and indeed he seemed to be.

"You got a happy ending," Heather said. "I'll leave you alone. I know we were never truly friends. Are those things enough of what you want, to be going on with?" She felt that vein of softness in Duke, opening slightly. Perhaps Veronica, who like Heather had chosen to live in the real world, would over time help her to grow new skin on the damaged parts.

"For now I'll hold my bond," Duke said. "But I'll be watching. A snake can shed one skin but it still grows back."

"They grow, and can't fit back into their old clothes," Heather said.

"Oh, you're a changed soul all right," Duke said, "a sweet little kitten now who wouldn't hurt a fly. Give me a break. And get out of here; we have work to do."

—

Power was like a starfish; even if you cut one limb off, another took its place. Or maybe it grew into two starfishes, giving you even more trouble. Heather's biology grades were never very good.

People still looked for a leader. Heather wasn't sure if standing aside would have been a punishment or a reward, but she felt the emotional currents of Westerburg turn toward her again. Push poll question of the day: if aliens did blow up the world except for you, what would you do then? How would you act if no one was going to punish you for it? Maybe you wouldn't be so concerned with pushing the crabs at the bottom of the bucket back in their place, if you were the only person you had to please.

 _Snakes grow out of their skins. If nobody changed, I'd still be hitting people over the head with Easy-Bake ovens_ , Heather thought. Not that the idea didn't still have some appeal to her, sometimes.

She was down at the Snappy Snack Shack, picking up some BQ corn nuts and considering whether to shoplift, as it was clear the middle-aged woman at the counter felt completely indifferent to everything around her.

Then outside the store, there was more. Party trick: independent of walls, Heather could tell exactly who came within a certain radius of her, provided she already knew what they felt like. Not that she'd show it off at any actual parties.

She knew all three of the drunk Remington College boys taking up valuable space on the sidewalk that a dog could've otherwise used to piss on. She watched them from a safe distance. David Harper, Brad Whatshisname, and Jamie-Or-Jeff-Who-Gives-A-Crap. Didn't know the fourth guy. She'd have crossed the other side of the street when seeing people like him, normally - ragged coat, unshaven grey mess of growth on his face, and all too many subtle things wrong about his look that marked him out as some homeless bum begging for spare change.

David was holding up the guy's begging bag. He threw it to Brad while the guy jumped for it. "Mine - mine - mine - " he gabbled.

"Jeez, man, this thing probably has fleas," Jamie-Jeff protested.

"Don't whine. A bet's a bet," David said. He shoved the guy hard, into Brad. The man protested again - mine, mine, then something that sounded disturbingly like _I'll kill you_.

Behind them, a motorcycle sped up and rattled on the sidewalk. Of course the rider saw the pedestrians, could have driven on the road. But instead it drove straight toward them without faltering - the well-known game of chicken.

There was drunk untouchability on one side, ganging up on a street bum just because they could, rich and careless men out for a night of fun at other people's expense. The struggling guy between them was a mess of fear and confusion and sickness. And on the other side Heather sensed released anger and confidence, fury and calculation and a drive for revenge.

David jumped. The motorbike missed the four by inches. "Dude, what the fuck!"

The biker turned around on a dime. "Isn't that the same as the game you're playing? Thought I'd join in on the fun."

"It's a school night, kid, go home!" Jeff-Jamie jumped as the bike revved again.

"Shit, man, that's enough." David snatched the bag and stepped away.

"Give it back to him." The streetlight caught J.D.'s face on the bike - idiot who thought he was too cool for a helmet.

If Heather still had her power, she'd command the three Remington sophomores to go drown themselves. On second thoughts, she'd heard on a TV show that drowning was a fairly peaceful way to go.

David darted for his car, pulling his friends with him. He revved up. You'd think car would win over bike in a game of street pizza any day -

Heather stepped out into the light. "Hi, ex-lover. Care to give me a ride?"

That brought David to lower the window.

"Look, David, it's your girlfriend! Little Miss Teen Suicide ... she's pretty," drunk Jeff-or-Jamie spewed out.

"She's not dead, is she?" Brad wondered aloud. "Am I drunk enough to see dead hot girls?"

Heather ignored them and zeroed in on her ex. In so many ways he was the worst of the three of them - and yet he still wasn't stronger than her. "I suppose you remember my photography hobby," Heather said, sweetly, thinking of worse vengeances and reluctantly setting them aside. "I have some great candid shots. Chuck that disgusting bag out the window like last week's blow, or else your school might be really interested to see some holiday snaps."

"No more parties for you," David promised. "Don't fuck her, Brad. She's too used-up and you'd catch something."

"I'll send you the burnt-up negatives," Heather promised. _Or at least send you a random selection of ashes._ She writhed inside at the feeling of deliberately humiliating herself in front of J.D., for the sake of a worthlessly altruistic cause. "Do we have a deal?"

Heather ducked as the bundle almost hit her. The red car got out of there. The homeless guy lunged toward it as it went - his fingers scraped across David's window - then he took a hard fall on the curb.

 _Remind me to make you pay to disinfect my car seat_ , Heather thought, glaring in her mirror at the two people in her back seat. _And like hell a little drive to the hospital makes any real difference to anything._ The man wasn't badly hurt enough to call an ambulance, though his compos mentis was definitely non. She'd no idea what to say herself, but J.D. sat next to the guy and talked to him like he was a real person - made him say he was a vet in Korea, talk about cities they'd both been in, calming down his jitters and some of the yelling and threats. The man's hands knotted and tightened over that bundle.

They dropped him off at the hospital. The most they could do was make with some loose change. Heather was nice enough to drive J.D. back to his bike.

"No such thing as a happy ending," Heather said. She spared a quick glance at the guy beside her. "Come off it; talk to me. It's like you gave me the world's worst STD and we didn't even fuck."

"Quoth she, regretfully?" J.D. said.

"Quoth she, trying to be kind. It's good to embrace new and rare experiences."

He lit a cigarette. "Suppose you want credit for saving poor me from the big drunk college assholes?"

"No, I want credit for saving _them_ from _you_ ," Heather said flatly. The cigarette hung from his hand, flashing a tiny red dot in the dark. He listened carefully to her for once in his life.

"I know what you're capable of," she said. "Ram Sweeney's sole contributions to the world were cow tipping and date rape, but you could have stopped him another way. You went straight to murder given the slightest excuse. Martha was right about you. You'd have killed me if she hadn't changed things. That's true, isn't it?"

J.D. didn't answer. He didn't need to.

"People are annoying and stupid," Heather said. "They give me headaches now, and I blame you for it. You set yourself up to lead a new social trend for love and tolerance and suddenly you have poached-egg-for-brains freshmen confiding in you they're worried Mom and Dad will kick them out if they tell they like dick. Stupid! Forget your sexual orientation, you need a goddamn brain! Don't tell people vulnerable secrets unless you have no choice! What the hell could I say?"

A scornful shrug from him. "Looks like you need to keep thinking, Madam President."

"It's not like there's any good answer," Heather sulked. "My mom and dad would just be happy I was happy ... but not everyone's folks were forced by years of exposure to a mind control power to love and give a big allowance." She'd told the kid to stay safe and experiment in college. "I'm tough; there's no non-supernatural monsters that can stand up to me. Did you and your ex's girlfriend find anything interesting hitting the books?"

He didn't take that small reminder as too great a wound, but relaxed a little to talk about it.

"There's a high probability that wendigos are real," J.D. said. "Man-eating ice giants. Your grandmother told us that killing became an addiction - hence the myth about insatiable cannibals. Ever think about taking a road trip to the Great Lakes?"

"I'll think of you when I'm having Sex On The Beach," Heather said. He couldn't hide his tiny mental twitch before he figured out the innuendo. "It's a kind of cocktail, peach schnapps and vodka, orange garnish - it's very. Actual sex on the beach is _not_ very. Sand is unpleasant." Or so she assumed, after a deeply unsatisfying trip to second base in Cancun. She flashed J.D. a grin, knowing that they both knew exactly what she was doing.

 _You've always noticed I'm pretty, and much more importantly interesting enough to watch like you couldn't take your eyes off me. You like interesting more than pretty. You thought I was awful, but then I started doing heroic shit and you got thrown for a loop. Leaving you utterly confused and still attracted despite your best judgments_ , Heather thought.

"I might not be up for wendigo hunting, but I could help you avoid committing homicide again," Heather offered. "In return, you can keep me from providing frank and fearless and admittedly true critiques on other people's disgusting habits. It doesn't seem fair, but here we both are."

They were two of a kind, maybe both sitting next to the only other person on the planet who'd really understand and appreciate it. The emotional undercurrents went both ways, flashing as quick as lightning, crossing each other in a strange harmony now.

"It could have gone the other way and you knew it when you gave it to me," Heather said. "You took a risk. I could have used this power to figure out what wounds people the most. I might be the kind of person who'd enjoy feeling them get hurt."

"Are you?"

"You already have your answer," Heather said.

She could feel what J.D. was feeling, but he was still balanced on an edge, like a coin that hadn't decided which way to fall. Roused interest and the sizzling intensity of physical desire mixed with second thoughts and hesitations, depression and uncertainty. And maybe there was something else mixed in there too: a sincere desire for affection to be both given and returned, a choice and bond forged freely between people who felt it was better to be together than alone.

"The position of 'boyfriend Heather Chandler dumped when she went to college' is still vacant," she reminded him.

She pulled over the car; turned off the lights.

"I could say - Given your power, I expect much better than adolescent fumblings from you - " Heather began, breathlessly. Her hands closed around shoulders, sleeves, warmth of touch-after-a-long-time-of-nobody, a clash of will and feeling and desire and yielding. "Or I could say - there's nothing more lamer and sickening-saccharine than admitting you have a feeling, a real feeling - " She stopped talking. She had to.

"You were right," she heard back after a while, the words muffled. "It seems I like fighting with you."

And from anyone else, that would have been a confession. From them, it was enough. A beginning.

—

 _The End_

Thank you for reading!


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